Big Eyes ***½ (2014, Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz) – Movie Review

Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz are totally excellent as the real-life naïve painter Margaret Keane and her husband Walter in director Tim Burton’s admirable, loving biopic. The film’s thoroughly likeable and appealing without necessarily being an award-winner or utterly memorable. It’s notable for representing a good change of pace for both star actors.

Spurred by Walter’s ambition, marketing abilities and money sense, Margaret achieves a phenomenal success, at least commercially, with her kitsch paintings of weirdly big eyed folk in the 1950s. But, there’s trouble in paradise. Though she does all the work, he claims all the credit and the couple fall out, landing the duo in legal difficulties and a high-profile court case.

Burton sides entirely with Margaret and seems to love her kitsch paintings, which helps to make her story so poignant and amusing. It’s amazing that as Walter is so demonised that the mesmerising Waltz is able to make him a charismatic, dangerous charmer. Nevertheless, it’s Margaret’s story and Adams’s film. She’s just right. It is king of surprising not to find Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp here, but Burton wanted to keep things fresh by working with new collaborators. And that’s good this time.

Happily, though, Burton’s employed his usual collaborator Danny Elfman for the admirable, unmistakeable soundtrack,  and Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography, Rick Heinrichs’s Production Design and Chris August’s Art Direction are impeccable work of the highest quality, adding immeasurable to the film’s success. The court trial, with James Saito as the judge, is in many ways the highlight. Danny Huston has an unrewarding role as the journalist Dick Nolan, who is a mere script-writer’s device as the film’s narrator.

Margaret Keane is still alive and painting, and pictured with Adams at the end of the movie.

It is Golden Globe nominated for Best Actor (Waltz) and Actress (Adams) and Best Original Song (Lana Del Rey for ‘Big Eyes’). Adams won the Golden Globe for Best Actress Comedy or Musical in a surprise win but was snubbed in the Best Actress Oscar nominations. Indeed there were no Oscar nominations for Big Eyes.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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