Can you explain this meaning of the film to me

It's really your choice if you want to take the Sci-Fi element literally. If you do, then aliens from the planet Tralfamadore have transported Billy to a zoo in their dimension where past, present, and future are one. Or you could look at the whole movie as Billy's hallucination after nearly dying in the plane crash. Vonnegut never insists one way or the other in the book, but most people seem to take the Sci-Fi pemise literally.

When I read the book and saw the movie, both times I had the thought that....

***SPOILERS AHEAD***
the only reason Billy could say he exists in the past and present and future at once is because he's near the end of his life. Meaning that, as a kid, you can't say you can do this, because you have like 90% future, and only a little bit of past. I am really struggling on how to say this... but basically, I thought the Tralfamadore idea was just his way of coping with the passing of time, as he can relive different moments at different times. However, in both cases (book and movie), this little "coping mechanism" theory kind of dissolves when he tells his daughter and son-in-law exactly how he ends up dying. This part kind of tells you right upfront that, in this story's case, the sci-fi, Tralfamadore element WAS real, and he has learned to exist in all dimensions of time. I hope that makes sense.

I interpret the sci-fi element as being Billy's fantasy (being stuck in comfortable room and mating with a pretty woman younger than his daughter).

In my opinion, his death scene is not proof of his time-travel, but another example of his day-dreaming. He has taken Paul Lazzario's revenge fantasy and made it his own. He wants to die a glorious, meaningful death. In the book, America has been "balkanized" in the future, and Billy is assassinated by a hitman with a laser gun.

The main reason I don't believe the sci-fi part is real is because of a character that is not in the movie -- Kilgore Trout the sci-fi author. Several aspects of the aliens (the zoo, the fourth dimension) were written by Billy's friend Kilgore. After the plane crash and the resulting brain surgery is when he starts to believe that his abduction was real. (He might have been brain-damaged as a child too, when he almost drowned after being thrown into the deep-end of a swimming pool by his father.) Another thing not in the movie is Montana Wildhack's locket. She is wearing a gold locket in the movie when she is transported to the zoo, but it is gone in the last scene. In the book, the locket has an insciption that is exactly the same as the framed poster in the Lions Club.

The events in the story (both book and film) are all meant to be taken literally, although the film's theme is more expressionistic (than realistic). Vonnegut is weighing in on the free will vs destiny argument. Basically asking what if free will was a concept believed no where else in the universe but on earth.

Throughout his life Billy is an innocent whose fate is determined by the people and events around him. Once he buys into the concept that everything in the universe is pre-determined and once he knows how everything turns out, he can stop struggling to alter events. When he has a premonition of the plane crash he initially tries to stop the take-off but only because he feels responsible for the others on the plane. Then he realizes the futility of altering things and calmly returns to his seat as the events play out.

It really helps to read the book. But it can be a masterpiece if you stay very open to the idea's presented by Vonnegut. You have to pick up on the little things like the meaning of "and so it goes" and the many ironic themes. What I don't get is the planet thing. Mean is all the things he tells throughout his life really happening or is he just reliving in his mind some of his memories but he changed them around? Well thats the idea really there is no right answer specifically. It has to be taken in with a very open mind. But it is kinda like he rejected reality and subjected his own to cope with all of the tramatic events that occured in his life.

If God exists and he is omniscient, then there cannot be free will.

He is not relivingthem in his mind. He is going back in forth in time and reliving them literally.

Also if you didn't know, this is called the show..

A key to the work is "being unstuck in time" and the inherent accompanying vision of this state. Billy is no longer a prisoner of linear time. And because of this he has the ability to behold what William Blake referred to as "Fourfold Vision." Fourfold Vision is the realization of imagination + reality, a purifying of the senses, of becoming, of being awake in dreams. What this life should and can be if/when we wake up and see it's awesome, terrifying beauty.

Does this help or only create more confusion?

~pemory