Bloom's fanciful adventures with conjoined Korean cabaret singers, a werewolf and a misunderstood giant are suffused with an affection for the bizarre, tapping into an affinity with the outsider that is a touchstone in Burton's work. In Bloom's fantastical universe, Burton is on familiar territory - a sleepy '50s-looking town recalls Edward Scissorhands, a spider-filled forest hints at Sleepy Hollow - serving up vignettes that, if occasionally rambling and unfocused, are marked with boundless visual imagination that hints at the darker currents in wholesome Americana. Part-Baron Munchausen, part-Forrest Gump, the approach of visualising the exaggerated tales of a dying man relayed to his dubious adult son echoes the storytelling traditions of Americana, yet recasts it in Burton's unique tone of voice. After the soulless Planet Of The Apes, Burton has scaled down the logistics but broadened the thematic and emotional scope, crafting a tale that feels grandiose yet homespun. It's a charming piece of witty, warm-hearted filmmaking.

Whimsical without being twee, freewheeling without being messy, moving without being schmaltzy, Big Fish aligns Burton's visual virtuosity and offbeat sensibility to a story that, for once, has more than one foot in the real world. In the novel Big Fish by Daniel Wallace, Burton has found a vehicle to express his fascination with the fantastical and its relationship to reality. It is something of a surprise, therefore, that it took the filmmaker until his 11th effort to make this conceit explicit. if any undercurrent has coursed through Tim Burton's work, it is that real life is frankly not good enough and needs embellishing.

From scissorhanded misfits to headless horsemen via Z-grade filmmakers.

Big fish games review