Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
57
(43 sources)
57
(43 sources)
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100
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90
Film Threat
A tale that's so enriching, so heartwarming, so funny, so touching and so breathtaking, you'll wonder why the king of wackiness didn't branch out sooner. Read Full Review » -
88
Rolling Stone
Director Tim Burton finally hooks the one that got away: a script that challenges and deepens his visionary talent. Read Full Review » -
88
New York Post
Even with Burton's imagination turning its trademark cartwheels, the film's big beating heart holds the whimsical offshoots steady. Read Full Review » -
88
USA Today
Has enough tasty bait to satisfy an array of moviegoers: Burton fans, Albert Finney fans, fans of tall tales well spun by experts and fans of movies that don't look like any other. Read Full Review » -
88
Chicago Tribune
A word of warning. Big Fish is so strange and so literary that audiences seeking conventional fare may get impatient with it. But it always takes effort to catch the big ones. This one is worth it. Read Full Review » -
88
Baltimore Sun
This picture boasts a story about a yarn-spinning Southern father (Albert Finney) and a sober-sided son (Billy Crudup) that gives it ballast and staying power beyond anything in previous, precious Burton fables like "Edward Scissorhands" or "Ed Wood." Read Full Review » -
80
Film Threat
An achievement of this magnitude is a stunning and extremely pleasant surprise. Read Full Review » -
80
Empire
In anchoring the whimsy to something more heartfelt, Burton is greatly aided by Billy Crudup, who underplays potentially cringeworthy bedside scenes with his dying dad. Read Full Review » -
80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Burton rebounds in a big way with Big Fish, a Daniel Wallace adaptation and visual feast that recaptures the fairy-tale simplicity and wrenching emotional power of "Edward Scissorhands." Read Full Review » -
80
Newsweek
When it catches fire, this great-looking movie offers hilarious diversions. Read Full Review » -
75
ReelViews
Big Fish is a clever, smart fantasy that targets the child inside every adult, without insulting the intelligence of either. Read Full Review » -
75
Entertainment Weekly
The movie is a gently overstuffed cinematic piñata, crammed with tall tales -- with giants and circuses and fairy-tale woods, plus a huge squirmy catfish, all served up with a literal matter-of-fact fancy that is very pleasing. Read Full Review » -
75
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75
Portland Oregonian
Too well-made and well-acted to be entirely cute -- but the result is fairly tepid in comparison to the overheated highlights of Burton's career. Read Full Review » -
75
Charlotte Observer
Like virtually all fish stories, it's discursive, funny, full of boasting, a suspect mix of truth and lies with an emphasis on the latter. Read Full Review » -
70
Los Angeles Times
There's delight to be had from watching Burton conjure up one fantastical Edward-inspired scenario after another. Read Full Review » -
70
TV Guide
Such astringent details as a banjo player plucking a few ominous notes from "Dueling Banjos" when Ed first lays eyes on the Norman Rockwellian beauty of Spectre ensure that the story's fundamental sweetness never becomes cloying. Read Full Review » -
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
An engagingly whimsical, sporadically charming, frequently very funny Southern Gothic fantasy that somehow doesn't quite come together to be as magical or meaningful as it's intended to be. Read Full Review » -
63
Boston Globe
The actor's job here is the hardest to pull off, since practical skepticism in a Tim Burton picture is next to villainy. Yet Crudup suggests complex grown-up feelings that makes the rest of Big Fish feel like an earnest collection of magic tricks. Read Full Review » -
63
Miami Herald
This is a theme tailor-made for Burton, although there are times in the movie when it feels like he's not taking enough advantage of it. Read Full Review » -
63
Chicago Sun-Times
Big Fish of course is a great-looking film, with a fantastical visual style that could be called Felliniesque if Burton had not by now earned the right to the adjective Burtonesque. Read Full Review » -
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The problem is, there's just not enough Burton in Big Fish. Read Full Review » -
63
New York Daily News
But Burton and August have added anger to the mix, and it sours much of the otherwise wondrous tone. Read Full Review » -
60
The New Yorker
What is most disappointing about Big Fish is the nervousness of its fantasizing--a strange unwillingness, new in Burton's work, to trust the wit of the audience. [15 December 2003, p. 119] Read Full Review » -
60
Dallas Observer
For the first time, Burton seems comfortable walking around the real world. Read Full Review » -
60
Wall Street Journal
Simultaneously beguiling and frustrating -- the product of an imagist and dramatist uncomfortably conjoined. Read Full Review » -
50
Salon.com
It's nicely made, well shot, and reasonably well acted, yet it's enough to filet the life force right out of you. We need stories in order to dream, and to live. But that doesn't mean we have to buy every crappy one that comes down the pike. Read Full Review » -
50
Chicago Reader
The Alabama setting is as phony as the one in Forrest Gump, and for all of Finney's effectiveness as a yarn-spinning geezer, his whoppers seem disconnected from his character and each other--a weakness Burton fails to resolve with an awkward Felliniesque finale. Read Full Review » -
50
New York Magazine
Has moments of genuine emotion...but overall, the film feels like it issues from a place Burton doesn't inhabit. Read Full Review » -
50
Variety
The imaginatively illustrated but precariously precious film offers up a string of minor pleasures but never becomes more than moderately amusing or involving. Read Full Review » -
50
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50
The New York Times
The most curious thing about this magical-realist fable...is how thin and soft it is, how unpersuasive and ultimately forgettable even its most strenuous inventions turn out to be. Read Full Review » -
40
Slate
The most fluid, lyrical, and even-toned work of his (Burton's) career. It's also the most boring by a factor of 10. Read Full Review » -
40
The Hollywood Reporter
A misfire. The film that wants to be lighter than air instead crashes to earth with the swiftness of a concrete parachute. Read Full Review » -
40
Time
The film fairly groans from all the narrative gamesmanship and lavish romantic gestures...The unbewitched viewer may groan as well. Read Full Review » -
40
Village Voice
An abundance of dull exposition building up to the son's attempt to cap his father's whoppers climaxes with a tedious flurry of Fellini-esque endings and Spielbergian fillips. The magic doesn't work twice -- or even once. Read Full Review » -
40
LA Weekly
The whole seems disjointed, incoherent and lacking in the startling originality of the other two Edwards (Scissorhands and Wood) who, half a career back, poured from Burton's distended outsider imagination. Read Full Review » -
40
Austin Chronicle
Tim Burton is all grown up and getting serious with this wildly scattershot tale. Read Full Review » -
30
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30
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30
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25
San Francisco Chronicle
A long-winded indulgence in tear-and-a-smile whimsy, elevated above the merely irritating and saccharine by compelling art direction. Read Full Review »
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