Ed Wood was bold, though. There, Alexander, Karaszewski and Burton took someone regarded in certain quarters as the worst filmmaker of all time, and injected him with positivity and a self-belief that few were expecting. The pay-off was not just how entertaining Ed Wood remains as a film, but how much more impactful it makes the sadder moments of the movie. It remains, for my money, Tim Burton’s best film. The film, which runs to an economic – and that’s no complaint – 106 minutes, races through this story, a pace that’s at first just a little jarring. Alexander and Karaszewski have opted to tell a lot of the Keanes’ story at speed, rather than a little of it in a lot of detail, and it’s not entirely a successful choice. It means, for instance, that characters outside of the main pair arrive and leave the picture without even threatening to be two dimensional. Take, for instance Terence Stamp’s terrifying art critic (and Big Eyes has one or two asides about the state and quality of criticism), or Jason Schwartzman’s gallery owner. Their screen time of both is best calculated in seconds rather than minutes, as the film needs to gallop on to the next part of the story. Burton’s camera absorbs the detail, as you might expect, and in particular, he savours the art. The paintings of Margaret Keane are given due service here, even if the wonderfully over-emphasised eyes become used elsewhere in the film, to far lesser effect. Not for the first time too, he’s on stronger ground when the film takes its lighter turns. Given what’s gone before, it’s another odd, but not ineffective, choice when the eventual court case seems played more for comedy than drama. But it’s not a decision without merit, in a film that doesn’t convincingly settle on a voice in which to tell its story. Furthermore, the volume of Waltz’s performances doesn’t help with what Amy Adams has to work with. She has to contain her work here, in line with the part she’s playing, but it feels like we don’t get enough time with her by herself to fully flesh out what makes Margaret Keane and her work so special. It’s not a bad performance by Adams at all. Yet go back to that Walk The Line example: in that film, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon really helped lift an otherwise decent film. Adams and Waltz don’t really do that. There’s still much to like, and much to admire, about Big Eyes. But it does feel like an opportunity not fully grasped, and it feels as if the screenplay never fully gets to grips with the tone and feel of the story it wants to put across. On the upside, few will sit through what remains a perfectly functional movie, and not want to hunt out more about Margaret Keane when the credits roll. As such, Big Eyes is a success, just a surprisingly small one.