Big Eyes (2014)

A tacky movie about tacky art. A production as deep as a Margaret Keane painting. Tim Burton at his least Tim Burtonie. I just can't decide how I want to start this review. In actuality I enjoyed Big Eyes, a biopic of the artist Margaret Keane (here effectively essayed by Amy Adams) and the mid century art scandal by which her braggart second husband Walter (Christoph Waltz, scene chewing even more then usual) took credit for her art and it took a law suite (which amusingly involved Jehovah's Witnesses) to prove to the world who the real artist was (though some would argue that neither of them was really an artist, but that's neither here nor there).

For me Tim Burton works best when he's being less ambitious and this is a rather modest film, as mentioned above I don't think I've ever seen a Tim Burton film that felt less Tim Burtonie (though certainly not entirely absent of the Tim Burton aura). Mid century tacky is a theme that permeates the directors work (Edwards Scissorhands,, Big Fish, Ed Wood) so its appropriate  that he should do a film about the artist responsible for the critically hated but cultural embraced art of "little waifs with big eyes" that was an unexpected sensation in the 1960's. Putting Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz in a film together was also an interesting idea, knowing those two where in a movie together  would by itself  be about enough for me to see it regardless of plot or director. The pairing was certainly interesting to see once, but they are really different types of actors and there just wasn't a ton of chemistry there so I don't care if I never see them play off each other again. I did rather enjoyed the movies supporting cast, full of player who its always fun to see even when they have little to do, like Danny Huston, Jon Polito, Jason Schwartzman, Krysten Ritter, and Terence Stamp.

The story itself is an interesting one, though perhaps more suited to being a long article or a segment on a news magazine then a feature film, it only really worked here because of the creative flourishes in presentation ( I liked how when Margaret and her daughter where first driving to San Francisco it looked like they were driving there through mediocre paintings). Perhaps in keeping with the tacky astatic Big Eyes felt like a TV movie with an improbable visual effects budget, I enjoyed it, but I didn't enjoy it as 'art' per say, but as a reconstruction of tacky chic, both in subject and form. A paint by numbers guilty pleasure. **1/2