By JUDITH MCDANIEL

News Editor

For those who do not want to go see "Big Fish" and believe a few hours will be better spent again watching "The Last Samurai," give the movie 10 minutes before making a decision.

Director Tim Burton uses novelist Daniel Wallace's fantastic tale of reality and perception and transforms it into one of the best forms of diversion from mundane observations of everyday life.

The movie begins, naturally, with a big fish and tells the life of Edward Bloom, played by Ewan McGregor as young Edward and Albert Finney as the Edward of today.

Edward lives his life through tales so tall that his son, Will Bloom, played by Billy Crudup, finally becomes estranged from his larger-than-life father. When Edward becomes ill, Will is finally forced to understand the truth -- and fiction -- about his father.

Burton's use of the surreal to illustrate a real world completes the film and shockingly brings together Edward's past and present.

Burton ends his film, again, with a big fish, and audiences (if they had not realized before now) see the significance of every abnormal characteristic of the movie and suddenly understand truth is not as important as it was two hours ago.