Review of Big Eyes (2014) by Patrick C — 11 Jun 2015

Tim Burton is of course one of the most well known and financially successful directors in the world. He has delivered box office champions like Batman, Alice in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and artistic miracles such as Ed Wood, Sweeney Todd and Sleepy Hollow. He's also managed to add a stinker or two to his resume like Mars Attacks and Dark Shadows. Big Eyes isn't nearly as bad as those films but it stumbles terribly in the final act.

The real life story of Margaret Keane and her con artist husband Walter is probably the least curious oddity Burton has explored. The same can be said for Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the writing team known for their fascinating portraits of Ed Wood, Larry Flynt (The People vs. Larry Flynt) and Andy Kaufman (Man on the Moon). Was this story worthy of a feature? It seems a little more suited for the small screen - no insult as TV is in it's golden age at the moment.

What rescues the film for many viewers will be the exquisite production details. All 1950's wonderful, the setting is sun-dappled California with it's jazz clubs and San Francisco street vistas, art deco houses and ocean view highways. Burton's usual visual style and it's macabre monocromatic palate is set aside for an exciting change of pace. It's his warmest film to date. Amy Adams is charming as usual as the Southern artist and mother who becomes morally conflicted as she and Walter deceive the entire world when her big-eyed children become wildly popular. But Adams has had better material. Two-time Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz, who dazzled everyone with his smarmy Nazi commandant in Inglourious Basterds and his bounty hunting abolitionist in Django Unchained, is a problem here. He hams it up too much and comes of as an irritating mess especially in the film's ludicrous courtroom finale. The ending is such a misstep it almost dooms the film but the capable Adams keeps the viewers with her and Margaret. Now back to the shadows, Mr. Burton. They miss you.