Big Eyes - reviews of Tim Burton's 'art fraud' film

What you need to know

Tim Burton's biographical comedy-drama Big Eyes opens in UK cinemas this Christmas. The film, based on a real art fraud involving the work of American artist Margaret Keane, was written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote Burton's Ed Wood

Amy Adams stars as Margaret Keane, whose popular paintings of large-eyed children in the 1950s and 60s were fraudulently claimed to be the work of her husband, Walter Keane (Waltz). The film follows charming bully Walter's rise to fame on the back of Margaret's works, and his subsequent downfall when Margaret divorces him and reveals the truth. Opens 26 December.

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What the critics like

Though set 50 years ago, Big Eyes is "eerily a film of the moment" in the way it lays bare the misunderstanding of abuses of power against women, says Jordan Hoffman in The Guardian. The slow burn is watching Margaret find the courage to confront her husband, resulting in a fascinating, and funny, trial.

This "nimble, bemused, culturally curious" look at the married instigators of the kitschy big eyes paintings exudes an enjoyably eccentric appeal while also painting a troubling picture of male dominance and female submissiveness a half-century ago, says Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter. Adams and Waltz shine and it's good to see Burton playing to his strengths against after a stretch of uneven work.

Thanks to "a superb star turn by Amy Adams and a strong character performance by Christoph Waltz", Big Eyes is "a relentlessly engaging motion picture", says Scott Mendelson in the Forbes. It stands alongside the Burton films Ed Wood, Big Fish, and Sweeney Todd, and is a high water mark in a fascinating filmography.

What they don't like

"The eyes may be the windows to the soul, but they wind up revealing far too little in this unpersuasive, paint-by-numbers account" of the Keane art fraud, says Justin Chang in Variety. Despite Adams' affecting performance the film shifts uncertainly between exaggerated comedy and tense domestic drama and never penetrates the mystery at the heart of the Keanes' unhappy marriage.