Big Fish vs Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood

In movies, when a parent doesn’t get along with a child, it is usually because,

1. They’re cold and abusive
2. They’re too strict and demanding, or
3. They’re wacky and immature and the kid has to be the responsible one.

Big Fish features a character who thinks his father is guilty of C, but I think he’s overreacting. Big Fish, directed by Tim Burton, tells a story in the present, and another in the past, both about Edward Bloom. In his youth, Edward Bloom was like a smart Forest Gump: jovial, charismatic, and constantly stumbling into adventures and achievements. As a young boy, he snuck up onto the property of a local witch (Helena Bonham Carter), who, legend has it, can show your death to you by looking you in the eye. He knocks on her door, sees his death, and reasons that if he knows how it all ends, then nothing leading up to it will be that scary, because you know what you can survive. Smart kid. So, he goes about living life to the fullest, excelling at anything he tries, be it a sport or small business. Want a scary sheep-killing giant ran out of town? Edward’s your man.

Edward feels he’s too big and important for a small town, so he walks away. The bulk of the movie is a result of this journey. He finds a secret hidden town, in the swamps nearby, where the streets are made of grass and no one frowns or wears shoes. In this Utopia, he meets a poet, played by Steve Buscemi, who seems like he’s been in every Tim Burton movie, but is a first-timer. Edward winds up for a time in a circus, where he sees the love of his life, and then loses her almost as instantly. He knows she’s the girl for him, and stays on at the circus, doing odd jobs like bathing the strong man, and being fired from a cannon, gathering information from the ringmaster, played by Danny DeVito, who makes every movie he’s in just a little better, by sheer virtue of just being there in the first place. Besides the dream girl’s identity, DeVito’s character has a pretty big secret, one that, of course, only Edward can solve.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Edward (Albert Finney) is dying. He lies, wheezing and grumbling, in his bed. His son, Will (Billy Crudup), is in town with his wife, at the request of his mother (Jessica Lange). Will has long resented his father because of the old man’s long-winded tales. As a kid, Dad’s bedtime stories were the best, because he didn’t spare details that might entice or frighten young ears. As Will got older though, he began to notice that his father often steals the show with his stories, and that after a while, they’re just lies and wasted time. Will doesn’t know anything about the real Edward Bloom, and wants to use these final days to try and figure him out.

Big Fish is a sweet movie. It’s also kinda cute. I’ll probably see it again, and take my mom. Did I mention it’s a Tim Burton movie?

Tim Burton: Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood. Not much cute in those movies. Visionary, odd, creepy? Yes. Fun for Mom? Not so much.

Big Fish is full of great performances. Finney and Crudup are good, even if their parts aren’t as much fun as the stuff happening in Edward’s stories. As young Edward, Ewan McGregor is perfect at portraying the surprise that anyone would ever think he’s a big deal, while simultaneously portraying the vanity that of course he’s a big deal. He does this huge doofy grin a lot, once even while getting punched. His love for Sandra is the real thing, or maybe it’s just another prize for him to win, but to Edward that’s love. He finds out daffodils are her favorite flower, and fills the yard outside her window with them. It’s a striking visual, just one of many that remind us this is a Tim Burton movie (others include a Chinese duet between two women sharing one set of legs, an attack from jumping spiders, and of course, the giant, played by Matthew McGrory.) As young Sandra, Alison Lohman is good, if sparsely used. She’s constantly bathed in filtered angelic light, and smiling sweetly at Edward. Her adult counterpart, Jessica Lange, fairs a little better, partly because she gets more screen time, and partly because she’s Jessica Lange. When she slides into the bath with Old Edward, Lange has such effortless charisma you’ll wonder what that old blowhard ever did to deserve her. Well, it didn’t hurt that she loves his stories.

About those stories; it’s funny, because for all of the whining about Edward’s stories, they’re pretty harmless. Who cares if Edward says he confronted a giant, or found a hidden Utopia, or joined the circus? Nothing that happens to him is that crazy really, or even that impressive, other than the huge field of daffodils, at least not by Tim Burton standards. His son doesn’t get that he wasn’t an abused kid, or a neglected kid, or an unloved kid. His dad, though often absent, tucked him in with cool stories, and saved a town, and might have helped rob a bank. Plus, he kept his smoking hot wife interested for decades. He’s doing something right. Lighten up, dude.

Someone else who needs to lighten up? Every single character in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

Ya-Ya, like Big Fish, tells a story in the present and the past, and has a strained parent/child relationship at its core.

It’s not very good.

Sandra Bullock stars as Sidda, a New York playwright, who talks trash about her crazy mom in a magazine article. Mom, a southern belle named Vivi (Ellen Burstyn) reads the article, is furious, and instantly disowns her daughter. Sidda? Vivi? Who named these people?

And so, Sidda travels down to Louisana to patch things up. When she gets there, Mom is throwing a major Southern tantrum. Vivi dresses semi-formally every day, and always has a drink handy. Her husband is played by James Garner, and is thus level-headed and funny. If only he were contagious.

Sidda can’t deal with her mom’s drama. She’s outta here, man. And so, to prove that Vivi is crazy, but justifiably so, and not just crazy on purpose, or something, the Ya-Ya sisters kidnap Sidda and take her to a cabin in the woods. The Ya-Ya sisters, you ask? Weren’t you paying attention? Vivi is southern, so of course she’s eccentric and has wacky friends with wacky names. Teensy, Caro and Neecie (played, respectively, by Fionnula Flanagan, Maggie Smith, and Shirley Knight. And no, I did not make up their ridiculous names) have been friends with Vivi since childhood, when they formed the secret sisterhood of the Ya-Yas. Teensy, Caro and Neecie have a giant scrapbook, and they aim to set the record straight. There’s a lot about her mom that Sidda just doesn’t know. If she understands her mother’s past a little better, then maybe she’ll respect her more and they’ll reconcile.

And so, the Ya-Yas delve into Vivi’s dark past. Judging by her present of kimonos and martinis, you’d think she was maybe a little slutty, or maybe flighty in that harmless way that parents are in movies like Mermaids, and…Big Fish. And in a way, Vivi was that kind of parent, taking Sidda on plane rides and scamming gas stations. But she was also…spoiler…a belt-swinging drug addict. Yikes.

The stuff in the past is way easier to watch than the present day stuff. There’s more of a storyline, and less self-help book preaching. Ashley Judd and Ellen Burstyn are good choices for playing different versions of the same characters, and both give strong performances. If only the movie they were in wasn’t so unbelieveable. For one thing, the ages don’t quite add up. Ashley Judd plays Vivi as a young woman, presumably early thirties, with a younger version of Sidda, who is about twelve. Then, in present day, Sandra Bullock plays Sidda, at around age thirty, and Ellen Burstyn plays Vivi in her sixties. So, as a kid, Sidda is roughly fifteen years younger than mom, and as an adult, roughly thirty. It speaks enough about the movie that I was distracted in this way. Also, Vivi has other children in the flashbacks that don’t exist in the present day. Uh oh…sounds like there are more secrets! Vivi has a wacky story to tell, that’s for sure. Too bad it’s one so over the top it’d make Edward Bloom roll his eyes.

Big Fish: B
Divine Secrets of they Ya-Ya Sisterhood: C-