BIG EYES is yet another example of Tim Burton as a modern-day director: lazy, stuck in the past, and not seeming to make much effort at all when it comes to memorable moments. This film features vanilla direction that'll remind you of a typical TV movie of the 1990s. The real-life story is about a married couple who took the American art world by storm in the 1950s and 1960s by their paintings of children with huge, expression-filled eyes, but their marriage hid a dark secret: for a decade the wife had been doing the painting and the husband taking all the credit. For me, the real interest in the story comes from the media fall-out and the subsequent court case, but this is all crammed into the last half an hour and there's a lot of water-treading before that point. Christoph Waltz is reliably good as a different type of bad guy but Amy Adams fails to convince and is unsympathetic as the lead; she feels like she's self-consciously acting, that's all.

It's 1958 Northern California. Margaret Ulbrich (Amy Adams) leaves her husband and takes her young daughter Jane to San Francisco following her friend DeeAnn. When her husband threatening to take Jane away, Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) proposes to her and they quickly marry. Walter rents wall space from club owner Enrico Banducci and they get into a fight which makes it on the front page. Reporter Dick Nolan writes about Walter and his paintings. What started as a misunderstanding becomes a full blown lie. The paintings become a hit as Walter becomes a salesman taking credit for all the paintings. Eventually Walter finds that selling posters are more profitable and big eyes become everywhere. Times reporter John Canaday is a harsh critic.

This is a surprisingly traditional biopic from director Tim Burton. Other than the big eyed people that Margaret sees in a couple of scenes, there is nothing that is obviously Burtonesque. Amy Adams does a nice performance although I think her character is a little bit too willful at the beginning. It would be more dramatic to have her character grow over time. Christoph Waltz is amazing as the impresario manic salesman. In the end, this is a well made biopic with a couple of good performances and a couple of funny moments.

The film is based on an incredible true story of Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) the creator of the Big Eyes painting phenomenon. For a decade her domineering husband Walter (Christoph Waltz) took credit for the paintings as he also had the gift of gab and can sell them. They market the paintings, posters, post cards etc. Eventually Margaret can no longer live with the lie, as this ends in a comical court room scene.

In addition to being a story of the painting, it is one of the male dominated society and over coming the obedience idea in the name of honesty. This is a subdued Amy Adams and not the sexpot we saw in "American Hustle." The acting was good, but I felt the film was just short of an Oscar nod.

Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity.