So who invented the sad clown portrait? Who was the first to look at oversized, jumpsuit-clad, sequined, side-burned Elvis and say, “you know what would be great? If that face were painted on velvet.” There’s an entire genre of tacky Hollywood has yet to explore. I can’t wait, can you?
For now, we’ve got impoverished waifs with Big Eyes, the brainchild of Margaret Keane (Amy Adams). Of course, she wasn’t Keane in 1958 when she took her own waif and fled an abusive husband for San Francisco. This wasn’t done in the 50s, and Margaret can be forgiven for remarrying a cartoon character in two weeks’ time. Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) is also an artist, albeit a poor one, but he seems more a showman than anything else. When he realizes his new bride’s collection is a hit, he cashes in and takes the credit. Jerk.
(This part is kinda creepy as these terrible paintings are usually of pre-pubescent girls — the more popular the “art” becomes, the more Walter Keane has to explain where he finds inspiration. “So, Walter, what inspired you, a man who has never fathered a child, to paint a seven-year old girl in a bathing suit?”)
The more the waif collection sells, the more grotesque the lie becomes. Margaret is so cowed by her husband that she willingly lies to the point where she, husband and her own daughter all have a distorted sense of reality. This is the crux of the plot and one that, were it not a biography, could have been resolved in fifteen seconds.
For all his faults along ethical lines, Walter is a genius marketer; it’s a good bet that without his tireless selling, these shitty paintings never would have seen daylight, much less found a multi-million dollar international market. For whatever we think 
of Walter’s underhanded thievery, Margaret is a known figure because of Walter’s salesmanship.
Is Christoph Waltz even acting any more? He’s adopted such an Jim Carrey-ish, over-the-top on-screen persona it’s impossible to take anything he does seriously. Once again, he dances around like a big top emcee constantly overacting the part of lover, salesman, sexist, boss, canvas jockey and douchebag. I’m not sure this movie gets any better if he doesn’t overact — Tim Burton obviously enjoys these terrible paintings more than is humanly believable. But he enjoys a lot of weird images more than is humanly believable, don’t he?
Talent, silly Walter did lack
So he hijacked his wife’s prime tack
The thematic prize
Of grandiose eyes
Windows into the soul of a hack
Rated PG-13, 105 Minutes
D: Tim Burton
W: Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski
Genre: Bad art
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Velvet Elvis
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Walter Keane
