The Big Year

 

2 Stars

Surely a richer human comedy can be made about an eccentric subculture of obsessive birders than "The Big Year," in which Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson spend a lot of time peering through binoculars at one species or another.

Curious audiences will not be subjected to "Little Fockers"-level slapstick here. This is a gentle, diffident concoction.

But it has barely enough pulse to power a hummingbird.

Economic recessions tend to bring out the "must be nice!" response in movie audiences. Since "The Big Year" concerns three men (one rich, one pretty rich, one not) who spend 12 months and untold thousands of recreational dollars crisscrossing North America racking up sightings and vying for the title of world's greatest birder, the makers of this film can reasonably expect a certain amount of must-be-nice in response.

Screenwriter Howard Franklin goes his own way with the nonfiction book of the same name, inventing a trio of characters based a teeny-tiny bit on real-life central figures chronicled by journalist Mark Obmascik. Our leader, the one who narrates, is Brad, a divorced computer whiz played by Black. He dreams of embarking on a "big year," which in the birding universe means near-constant, often last-minute travel to various climates and locales, from the desert to the Everglades to the Aleutian Islands. Brad dreams of besting the birding record-holder, a contractor (Wilson) who once identified 732 separate species in a year. His blase confidence in breaking his own record provokes the competitive industrialist played by Martin.

The birding, of course, is handily symbolic as well as literal. Brad dives headlong into this world partly to escape the confines of an ordinary life, and like the Paul Giamatti character in the infinitely more distinctive wonky-subculture comedy "Sideways," he favors the species of birds others tend to overlook. (Brian Dennehy and Dianne Wiest, nicely cast, play Brad's parents.) Through birding, he meets a fellow obsessive played by Rashida Jones, the brightest spot in a mild picture. The Wilson character turns his consuming preoccupation into a wall separating him from his wife (Rosamund Pike), with whom he is having fertility challenges. Martin's character, meantime, is becoming a grandfather and sees birding as a way of keeping both the burdens of his millions and questions of mortality at bay.

The three men are not quite friends and not quite enemies, and while a different sort of schlocky Hollywood treatment of "The Big Year" might've gone hog wild with humiliating tit-for-tat competitive strategies, director David Frankel settles for mellower stuff, pleasant when it's working (which is occasionally), blandly noncommittal when it's not. Actors on the order of Anjelica Huston (as a coastal Oregon seafarer) come and go without making much of an impression, which is saying something. I like nearly everybody on screen in "The Big Year," but the material's so intent on avoiding caricature or indeed any sort of social satire, it neglects to make the characters any sort of funny.

 

     RSS

 

"The Big Year" Movie Trailer

 

MPAA rating: PG (for language and some sensuality).

Running time: 1:40.

Cast: Steve Martin (Stu); Jack Black (Brad); Owen Wilson (Kenny); Brian Dennehy (Raymond); Anjelica Huston (Annie); Rashida Jones (Ellie); Rosamund Pike (Jessica); Dianne Wiest (Brenda); JoBeth Williams (Edith).

Credits: Directed by David Frankel; written by Howard Franklin, based on the book by Mark Obmascik; produced by Karen Rosenfelt, Stuart Cornfeld and Curtis Hanson. A 20th Century Fox release.

 

more MOVIE REVIEWS ...

Recent Movie Reviews - Films in Theaters

 

The Big Year

The Big Year
Michael Phillips

Divorcee Brad (Jack Black) dreams of besting the birding record-holder, a contractor (Owen Wilson) who once identified 732 separate species in a 'big year.' Steve Martin enters the mix as a competitive industrialist.

The Big Year
Bill Wine

While The Big Year isn't for the birds, it's about the birds to a fault. Owen Wilson, Steve Martin, and Jack Black play bird watchers trying to win the prestigious North American competition and be named, 'The Best Bird Watcher in the World'

 

Footloose

Footloose
Michael Phillips

This remake of '80s classic misses a few steps. The leads, in the form of Kenny Wormald as Ren and Julianne Hough as Ariel, simply don't pop onscreen. Relocated to rural Georgia, the local kids dance to rebel against Rev. Shaw (Dennis Quaid).

Footloose
Bill Wine

It's a reboot of the popular 1984 teen dance drama that made a star of Kevin Bacon. Kenny Wormald inherits the Bacon role, the rebel-with-a-cause protagonist and gifted dancer from Boston who comes to the small town of Bomont, Tennessee. Dennis Quaid takes over the antagonist role, played in the original by John Lithgow, as the stern minister who is passionately opposed to public dancing

 

The Thing

The Thing
Michael Phillips

A paleontologist played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead is recruited to join a research team in Antarctica that has made a significant discovery in the annals of UFOs. Which is to say, they've found one. Director Matthijs van Heijningen remakes John Carpenter's 1982 cult classic rather well

 

Blackthorn

Blackthorn
Betsy Sharkey

Spanish filmmaker Mateo Gil's lightly rendered reimagining of the later days of Butch Cassidy expands on the rumors that the legendary outlaw and the Sundance Kid did not die in a 1908 shootout in Bolivia.

 

Trespass

Trespass
Bill Wine

Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman play upscale marrieds living in a seemingly secure mansion in Louisiana with their teenage daughter. When three masked thugs who gain entrance by impersonating cops take them hostage, they demand that Cage open his elaborate wall safe and extract the fortune in diamonds

 

Copyright © 2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc.