(USA, 105 min.)
Dir. Tim Burton, Writ. Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski
Starring: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Krysten Ritter, Jason
Schwarztman, Danny Huston, Terrence Stamp, Delaney Raye
“You can’t make a billion dollar gross unless millions of
people are satisfied with a picture,” said
producer Richard Zanuck of Tim Burton’s critically lambasted but financially lucrative
2010 fantasy Alice in Wonderland. Burton
is no stranger to the tensions of artistic integrity and commercial success, so
it’s a wonder to see Big Eyes emerge
from a spat of ambitious blockbusters that have the largest scale of the
director’s oeuvre, but hold the lower
ranks in the wild and wacky world of Tim Burton. Big Eyes marks a turn away from the fantasy tent-pole land of Alice, Dark Shadows, and Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory and back towards the quirky character-driven realm of
films like Ed Wood. Big Eyes stars Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz
as pop-artist Margaret Keane and her con-artist husband Walter, and the former
half of the pair is positively endearing while the latter half is quirky up the
wazoo. Big Eyes could have been a
return to form for Burton had the director excised every frame of the film
featuring Christoph Waltz, but it’s a stroke of genius for Amy Adams.