I’m willing to admit there’s more to Big Fish than I was able to get out of it, but I’m still not seeing it. There’s a whole lot to swallow here, and I’m not sure it’s all going down.

Let’s start with the plot. Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) is struggling in his relationship with his father Ed (Albert Finney) because he has never believed that anything his father has told him is true. His father has always stretched or completely made up stories about his life and lives through these recreated fantasies about his past.

We see, in flashbacks, many of these stories as Ed has told them with Ewan McGregor playing his younger self. The stories begin with himself as a celebrity in his home town, having been a star on his high school football and baseball team, and succeeding in every other way before he leaves his home to find success out in the great wide open.

He befriends Karl the Giant (Matthew McGrory), a giant who has previously been in hiding from the world and the two eventually join a circus run by Amos Calloway (Danny DeVito). There Ed meets Sandra (Alison Lohman), with whom he falls in love at first sight. Ed eventually succeeds in tracking down and marrying Sandra and then buying a home and starting a family. Sounds like a normal story – but everything is done in fantastic and magical ways. Time actually stops when he first meets Sandra, for example, and Karl is a giant of massive proportions.

A sub-story involving a town called Spectre is stranger though. Ed first encounters this town as a young man and finds it to be an eerie sort of paradise. The small, idealistic little town seems to represent a sort of heaven – he’s told he’s come too early when he first arrives. Ed manages to escape, however, and returns to the town later in life to find everyone old and the buildings all worn down. Ed does his best to buy back the land and restore everything it was before, even though it’s not exactly perfect.

I still can’t put my finger on the purpose of Specrte, though it definitely feels like there is one. Could it represent Ed’s attempts to maintain his tall tales throughout his life? Maybe it marks something of the contrast between fantasy and reality and Ed’s attempts to contrast the two. Another idea suggests Jenny (Helena Bonham Carter) was in love with him and that his first arrival was too early because she was too young, and the second too late because she was too old. In any case, the town certainly establishes the mythic tone of Ed’s stories as well as the importance the stories hold in Ed’s mind.

The larger question deals with the direction of the story as a whole. Though the film spends the vast majority of its time on Ed’s adventures, it seems that, in the end, nothing comes of the stories except as they relate to Ed’s relationship with his son – and even that is kind of strange. In a way that’s unclear, but genuine and sweet, Will comes to terms with his father’s dependence on his fantasies and finally reconciles himself to his father by giving in and participating in his world.

It’s all kind of hazy, but it’s also all beautifully done. Big Fish’s tall tales are as visually fantastic as the stories themselves and the vast array of sets and scenes is impressive. It’s all done in classic Burton fashion and Elfman’s score reminds us of this distinct world. It’s fun to be back. If only we knew where we were, it could have been a classic.