Big Eyes

Big Eyes tells the true-life story of painter Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), with the movie detailing the character’s marriage to Christoph Waltz’s charismatic yet sleazy Walter and the eventual fallout of his decision to take credit for her drawings. Filmmaker Tim Burton admittedly does a smashing job of initially drawing the viewer into the proceedings, as the early part of Big Eyes boasts a fast-paced, colorful sensibility that’s heightened by Adams’ typically appealing turn as the central character. It does become dishearteningly clear, however, that there’s just not enough story here to sustain a full-length motion picture, with the film suffering from a repetitive midsection that grows more and more tedious as time progresses (ie once the conflict between Margaret and Walter has been established, Big Eyes treads water to an almost shocking extent). The excessively deliberate pacing and annoyingly over-the-top performance by Waltz compounds the film’s simplistic atmosphere, as the narrative increasingly begins to resemble an empowering, feel-good drama that one might expect to see on Lifetime. By the time the bizarre, thematically-incongruous courtroom finale rolls around, Big Eyes has confirmed its place as yet another in a long line of disappointments from a once rock-solid filmmaker.

** out of ****