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We here at Muskrat News have been criticized for presenting an overly one-sided view of current events, of being biased against the current administration, and of being insensitive to the finer things in life. In order to counter this scurrilous libel, we have invited White House Svengali Karl Rove to initiate our new Arts Section by reviewing the new Tim Burton film, "Big Fish."
Big Fish is a movie about Fathers and Sons, about the stories we tell each other, and about the nefarious ways of Democrats. In it, a kindly Southern patriarch (Albert Finney) is distressed that his son has strayed from the righteous path. Not only has the son become a journalist for UPI, but he has actually moved to Paris and married some French tart! Cleary, the director means to establish a Manichean battle between Good (men form the South who tell fibs) and evil (UPI was, after all, the employer of Helen Thomas).
The son, played by Billy Crudup, is shown as being put off by his father's fondness for tall tales, apparently believing that there is some kind of dishonor in changing the specifics of past events in order to make things sound better to your audience. The young man is clearly wrong - nobody wants to hear exact details about what Albert Finney, or the President, actually did in his youth.
Many of the elder man's fanciful stories revolve around his courtship of the young man's mother, which in this reviewer's opinion is a completely appropriate; nobody wants to hear boring details about real courtships, which tend to be heavy on raging hormones, hanging chads and questionable election board decisions. Instead the old man presents his courtship as an epic quest, assisted by colorful but good-hearted characters such as a lumbering giant and the denizens of a circus, clearly symbolizing Enron and other financial giants, whose help we all need once in a while. There's even a bank robber, which I think might be modeled on Neil Bush; the media guide didn't say.
The movie deals frankly with the darker sides of life, showing familial loss and suffering, and in a remarkably prescient bit of scripting, portrays a Howard-Dean-esque character, a poor loser, filled with uncontrollable rage and clinically deranged behavior. He is identifiable as a Democrat because he is shown as an avid consumer of Playboy, which Republicans do not read.
Throughout, our hero is shown as prospering through his own hard work, pluck, and self-confidence, not through government handouts. In the end, the son comes to realize that the narrow "truth" is not only unimportant, but bores people and tests poorly with focus groups. The movie swells to a dramatic triumph when the son fabricates a story about WMD in a Near Eastern country and refuses to be dissuaded when his simpering journalist colleagues try to convince him it's a lie.
Or something like that that. You may have seen a different ending. But my version is the one that's going to get printed. What do you want, the facts of what happened or what sounds good?
Big Fish contains a fight scene or two and a barely-glimpsed naked woman swimming in a river at night, and is rated PG-13 for the depiction of journalists at work and people speaking French.
Karl Rove is a Senior White House Advisor; the views expressed here are not the views of Muskrat News or of anyone whose seratonin levels are in balance.
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