In a sentenceAmy Adams tries to get a word in while Christoph Waltz appears to be addressing the next street
In mid-century San Francisco, Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) paints figures with enormous eyes. Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) sells her work, and the pictures find buyers while their creator struggles for recognition. Around them are Dick Nolan (Danny Huston) and a public willing to buy the paintings. Margaret wants to be acknowledged as the artist, but the man promoting her pictures stands between her and that recognition. As the paintings attract attention, questions of who makes them and who gets the credit become inseparable from the business of selling them.
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Tim Burton gives Big Eyes an appealing softness, and Amy Adams makes Margaret Keane’s struggle matter. The brisk storytelling and Christoph Waltz’s overplaying keep a worthwhile drama from becoming a particularly searching one.
Big Eyes is an engaging but limited drama about a painter denied credit for her own work. Tim Burton takes Margaret Keane seriously, which matters when her enormous-eyed figures are so easy to dismiss, and Amy Adams makes her worth caring about. We can see why this story attracted him: the pictures sit comfortably within the film’s soft, almost cartoonish appearance. He is less convincing when he tries to make the exploitation funny.
Margaret makes the pictures; Walter Keane sells them. That division gives the screenplay by Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander plenty to investigate: whose talent is valued, who controls the proceeds, and how a painter learns to accept being overlooked. Instead, the film moves briskly through the dispute over authorship without spending enough time on Margaret’s thinking. The story is easy to follow, but the woman at its centre remains less fully understood than she should.
Amy Adams supplies much of what the writing leaves out. Her Margaret is anxious without becoming merely helpless, and the performance suggests someone who has to work up to asserting herself. We were moved by her struggle to claim the paintings, because Amy Adams makes the wish to be acknowledged feel difficult even to express. The film needs that hesitancy: it helps us understand how knowing the work belongs to her might not be enough to make her say so.
Christoph Waltz gives Walter far more room than the drama can comfortably accommodate. His broad performance can be entertaining, but it repeatedly distracts from Margaret. A film about a woman’s work being overshadowed needs to be careful about giving the man so much attention, and Tim Burton does not always seem to notice the problem. We need to understand the hold Walter has; being repeatedly shown that he is overbearing does not do that.
Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography is a stronger reason to stay. The soft, heightened images suit the painted faces, while Rick Heinrichs’s production design makes mid-century San Francisco an inviting place to spend time. The pictures are allowed to look touching, unsettling or faintly ridiculous without the film insisting that we settle on one response. That freedom is welcome, and it means we need not share Margaret’s taste to care about what happens to her work.
Joseph C. Bond IV keeps the editing brisk, although the transitions sometimes feel hurried and the film rarely settles long enough to complicate an impression. Danny Elfman’s score helps the emotion along, but it cannot reconcile the uneasy shifts between Margaret’s distress and Walter’s comedy. The narration adds another distraction when the performances already have enough competing demands on our attention. At 106 minutes, the film is not overlong; it could simply spend its time more usefully.
The familiar biographical formula is a poor fit for the oddness of the pictures. We would have welcomed a longer look at why Margaret keeps making them and why other people want them on their walls. Amy Adams provides enough reason to stay for anyone interested in artists and the business conducted around them. Go for her, and expect to spend some of the evening wishing everyone else would quieten down.
The consensus on Big Eyes is mixed, leaning towards modest approval. Amy Adams attracts the most consistent praise for giving Margaret Keane sympathy, anxiety and a growing resolve, even when critics find the surrounding drama thin. The period design, San Francisco imagery and Burton’s attention to Keane’s paintings also earn approval. Several reviews welcome his move towards more grounded storytelling; The Guardian finds an insightful account of Margaret’s struggle to claim authorship.
The divide is over how deeply the film explores that struggle, with verdicts ranging from thoughtful and engaging to dramatically inert. Reservations cluster around conventional storytelling, shallow characterisation and an unsettled tone. Christoph Waltz is particularly divisive: The Hollywood Reporter praises his performance, while Variety finds him overpowering. Many reviews argue that the film raises questions about art, exploitation and recognition without examining them closely enough, though its warmer notices find substance in those same themes.
The critic sees the film as one of Burton’s most thoughtful and accomplished works in years. He singles out Burton’s successful move away from fantasy, horror and science fiction.
Read the full review →Kermode finds the film an insightful, grown-up return to form for Burton. He praises Amy Adams’s sympathetic portrayal of Margaret Keane and the film’s account of her struggle to claim authorship.
Read the full review →O'Sullivan finds the biopic nimble and distressing, and a welcome change of pace for Tim Burton. She singles out the film's magnetic big-eyed imagery and its playful ambiguity about whether Keane's art is grotesque or gorgeous.
Read the full review →The review regards the film as an engaging account of artistic creation and exploitation. It singles out Amy Adams’s performance as a key strength.
Read the full review →Dowd finds the film an underwhelming, overly square biopic, despite some surface pleasures. He praises its mid-century San Francisco atmosphere but criticizes the passive portrayal of Margaret and distracting narration.
Read the full review →McCarthy finds the film nimble and enjoyable, though less strange and resonant than Burton’s Ed Wood. He singles out Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz’s performances, along with the period design and San Francisco cinematography, for praise.
Read the full review →
Ed WoodAnother misunderstood artist, given more room for eccentricity, failure and stubborn hope.
Séraphine · not on Fi1m yetA painter’s working life receives the patient attention Margaret sometimes goes without.
The Wife · not on Fi1m yetAnother woman’s authorship disappears behind a man’s reputation, with a sharper marital focus.
Camille Claudel · not on Fi1m yetArtistic ambition and an unequal relationship receive a more sustained, bruising examination.
The Red ShoesFor a more feverish account of artistic talent and the people claiming it.
