Have You Ever Been Embarrassed by Your Father? What Big Fish and I Am Sam Reveal About Understanding Our Fathers

With Father’s Day approaching, I found myself thinking about some films about father-child relationships, and a question that probably sounds a little unfair:

Have you ever been embarrassed by your father?

Most of us can probably think of some examples.

Perhaps he said something awkward in public, or he lectured you with a cringeworthy and old-fashioned opinion. Or more commonly, he reacted to a situation in a way that left you wishing he would just stop talking.

The specific incident almost doesn’t matter. For many of us, there comes a point in life when we stop seeing our fathers as heroes.

Wanting a Different Father

This is partly why films like Big Fish resonate with me.

On the surface, the conflict between Edward Bloom and his son Will seems to be about storytelling.

The father tells impossible stories; the son wants facts. The father romanticises his life; the son wants honesty.

But underneath all of that lies a quieter tension: The son wishes his father were someone else. Someone who makes more sense and is easier to understand.

Many of us have probably felt some version of that. Not necessarily because our fathers told tall tales, but because they failed to become the person we wanted them to be.

Fathers Who Do Not Fit the Ideal

That also reminds me of I Am Sam. The film revolves around a father who does not fit society’s expectations of what a father is supposed to look like.

His daughter Lucy loves him deeply, but she also becomes increasingly aware of the ways he differs from other fathers.

The painful part is not that she loves him less. It is comparison – as children, we rarely compare our parents against the rest of the world. As we grow older, we inevitably do.

Suddenly we notice things other children seem to take for granted.

This feels relatable even if we have never stood in Lucy’s shoes. Our fathers do not necessarily have disabilities. Yet every family eventually discovers that its parents do not perfectly match the ideal image presented by society. Then again, neither does life itself.

Perhaps they are old-fashioned, socially awkward, or perhaps, more painfully, they are not particularly successful at work or in life.

The details might vary, but the experience does not.

When Our Fathers Were Heroes

When we are children, our fathers often seem larger than life.

They fix things and carry heavy objects, literally and metaphorically. They also seem to know the answers to questions we have not even thought to ask.

Children naturally turn their parents into something bigger than they really are.

For a while, our fathers do not exist as ordinary people. They exist as pillars of our lives. At least, that’s how I remember it.

That is probably why Edward Bloom’s stories worked so well on everyone except his son. Children are remarkably willing to believe in legends. Adults tend to become suspicious of them.

The Day the Hero Falls

Then something changes.

Usually somewhere around the teenage years or early adulthood, we begin noticing our fathers might not be who we imagined them to be. Perhaps that is one of the less discussed parts of growing older: our understanding of other people changes as much as our understanding of ourselves.

The father who once seemed wise turns out to be stubborn. Some fathers turn out not to be particularly successful at all. They struggle at work, in relationships, or simply in life itself. The people we once looked up to suddenly seem just as lost as everyone else.

Somehow the flaws were probably always there. We simply did not see them.

This is often when embarrassment surfaces. Not because our fathers suddenly changed, but because our perspective did.

And I suspect this happens regardless of whether someone’s father is objectively admirable or objectively awful.

Even good fathers eventually disappoint their children in some way. No human being can survive forever inside another person’s idealised image of them.

Will Bloom’s frustration in Big Fish feels so recognisable because it arrives after this exact moment. The father he once admired no longer feels larger than life. Instead, he feels exaggerated, confusing, and impossible to take seriously.

The stories have not changed. Will’s perspective has. Sometimes understanding arrives years later than it should have.

The Reverse Role Model

There is another stage that people rarely talk about.

At some point, many young adults quietly decide they do not want to become like their fathers.

Sometimes it happens consciously. Sometimes it does not.

We begin defining ourselves against them.

If they were emotionally distant, we become emotionally expressive. If they struggled to be considerate, we try to become socially aware.

When Edward Bloom kept telling exaggerated tales, Will Bloom tried to stay firmly grounded in reality.

The father who once served as an aspiration gradually becomes a warning sign.

A reverse role model.

Does that sound like what your story as well? Many of us might have experienced this stage without ever giving it a name.

The Moment We Start Seeing a Person

When I was younger, I found my father extremely difficult to get along with. Eventually I stopped talking to him very much. Probably another reason Big Fish resonates with me.

For a long time, I focused almost entirely on the things I disliked about him.

Then something changed. Slightly on him, and more on me.

As I got older, I began noticing something I had never really considered before.

My father did not just struggle to get along with me. He struggled to get along with most people. That was simply one of his limitations.

The older I became, the harder it was to interpret every flaw as a personal offence – some of them were not signs of malice, but signs of inability. There were things he genuinely did not know how to do.

And yet, looking back, I do not think he ever stopped loving me.

What changed was my understanding of the difference between loving someone and being good at showing it. Some relationships survive not because they are perfect, but because they become more important than the expectations we once placed on them.

For the first time, I started wondering how many of the things I disliked about him were things he disliked about himself.

Maybe Fathers Were Never Meant to Be Heroes

Many father-child relationships probably follow a similar path.

As children, we want someone to look up to. Then we reach our teenage years and become critics. But when we become adults, some of us eventually learn to become observers.

We stop asking whether our fathers were perfect, or whether they lived up to every expectation we had. Instead, we begin asking a different question.

Who were they really?

The answer is often less flattering than the childhood myth. But it is usually more honest. In some ways, adulthood itself seems to involve letting go of idealised versions of people, success, and happiness.

I believe this is ultimately where both Big Fish and I Am Sam arrive.

Not at the conclusion that their fathers were ideal. But at the recognition that they were human.

At the end of the day, Will Bloom’s real journey was not about learning to appreciate his father. Instead it was to stop trying to correct him.

He spends years wishing his father would become more factual, more understandable, and more ordinary.

Only near the end does he stop asking who his father should have been, and start accepting who he actually was. Some truths hurt because they replace comforting stories. Others hurt because they reveal there was never a comforting story to begin with.

In a similar way, my father never became the role model I wanted him to be. He never transformed into a different person. His flaws never magically disappeared.

What changed was that I eventually realised those flaws did not deserve something as strong as hatred.

He was not a hero. He was not a villain either. He was simply a human being with strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, and limits.

And perhaps understanding that was the first step towards appreciating him.

So this Father’s Day, I find myself returning to that uncomfortable question.

Have you ever been embarrassed by your father? For me, the answer is a definite “yes”.

But perhaps a better question is: Have you ever realised your father was just a human being?