You look at three names featured as main stars (Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson) and you immediately projects seeing them in a comedy, right? Right. But "The Big Year" gives them almost nothing of comic to work with and provides a dramatic piece that seems to entertain a bit to later give you a moral of the story. This was the wrong movie to preach a message to the audience, specially a worn-out message given and expelled thousand times before and in better movies.
To make business worse for this flick: how come this went unnoticed by people even with such leads? Practically straight to video in here. Well, with justice because it's too dead inside and it's too brief in its goodness. "The Big Year" of the title refers to a tradition among bird watchers, a sort of championship between them to see how watches and catalogs more species during a year period. Wilson is the current winner and he promises to beat everyone again, while Martin and Black join the race for the first time after spending a whole time dreaming on entering this and they team up to defeat the arrogant smarty man. It would be OK if it was just that (and one thinks how could a writer make something funny out of this? Well, he doesn't) but no, we follow their family problems, failed marriages or at the brink of it, fathers who couldn't possibly care less about the son's passion in watching birds; or the thoughts that come when you're about to retire yourself from business but people just don't let you go.
Too stiff and too immersed in problems to be a funny picture - once again, this was sold as a comedy - and too easy to make a good drama. A comic movie but where's the jokes, where's the punchlines? Even if it was a R-rated film it wouldn't be funny because there's nothing amusing in there to provoke laughters (except for the Hitchcockian scene). Clichéd as hell, the dramatic moments are nothing less than to make some parallel lines about life/heart/love issues, things that truly matter over pointless obsessions and its costs. If you like the theme I suggest you to watch "Pelican Blood", a darker film though but passionately committed in presenting what being birdwatchers truly means.
It's not much a bad film, it floats quite well in its pacing, you almost enjoy but then it never lives to its potential in become a film filled of humored situations. First rate aspects of this was seeing Rashida Jones imitating bird noises, the only funny parts of the movie; Black and Martin pairing was good and full of positive reflections; and the FM station soundtrack entirely composed of songs with bird on the name, that includes Jack Black's jolly Trashman's ringtone, (now everybody heard about the birds!), that thing plays a lot in the movie. It saddens not because it reduces the trio in such charismatic yet flawed project but because there's a whole bunch of great people in here and they can't do much with what they're given: Dianne Wiest, Kevin Pollak, Rosamund Pike, Anjelica Huston, Brian Dennehy, Tim Blake Nelson, Barry Shabaka Henley, JoBeth Williams, all in minor roles, sometimes good, other times it's just awkward.
It might work to some, I think, it's not that bad, just wasn't so positively interesting for me. 5/10
To make business worse for this flick: how come this went unnoticed by people even with such leads? Practically straight to video in here. Well, with justice because it's too dead inside and it's too brief in its goodness. "The Big Year" of the title refers to a tradition among bird watchers, a sort of championship between them to see how watches and catalogs more species during a year period. Wilson is the current winner and he promises to beat everyone again, while Martin and Black join the race for the first time after spending a whole time dreaming on entering this and they team up to defeat the arrogant smarty man. It would be OK if it was just that (and one thinks how could a writer make something funny out of this? Well, he doesn't) but no, we follow their family problems, failed marriages or at the brink of it, fathers who couldn't possibly care less about the son's passion in watching birds; or the thoughts that come when you're about to retire yourself from business but people just don't let you go.
Too stiff and too immersed in problems to be a funny picture - once again, this was sold as a comedy - and too easy to make a good drama. A comic movie but where's the jokes, where's the punchlines? Even if it was a R-rated film it wouldn't be funny because there's nothing amusing in there to provoke laughters (except for the Hitchcockian scene). Clichéd as hell, the dramatic moments are nothing less than to make some parallel lines about life/heart/love issues, things that truly matter over pointless obsessions and its costs. If you like the theme I suggest you to watch "Pelican Blood", a darker film though but passionately committed in presenting what being birdwatchers truly means.
It's not much a bad film, it floats quite well in its pacing, you almost enjoy but then it never lives to its potential in become a film filled of humored situations. First rate aspects of this was seeing Rashida Jones imitating bird noises, the only funny parts of the movie; Black and Martin pairing was good and full of positive reflections; and the FM station soundtrack entirely composed of songs with bird on the name, that includes Jack Black's jolly Trashman's ringtone, (now everybody heard about the birds!), that thing plays a lot in the movie. It saddens not because it reduces the trio in such charismatic yet flawed project but because there's a whole bunch of great people in here and they can't do much with what they're given: Dianne Wiest, Kevin Pollak, Rosamund Pike, Anjelica Huston, Brian Dennehy, Tim Blake Nelson, Barry Shabaka Henley, JoBeth Williams, all in minor roles, sometimes good, other times it's just awkward.
It might work to some, I think, it's not that bad, just wasn't so positively interesting for me. 5/10