I suspect the producers of The Big Year are onto something when it comes to timing: at a time of upheval and strife, the most successful entertainments saunter along quietly, offending no one, while taking everyone's mind off their troubles.
Add a few musical numbers... and you've at least got Footloose.
The Big Year is based on one of those "i did it" tales that are very Oprah's Book Club, or at least, were very Oprah until she exited the stage. Gender specific, they tell us of someone's accomplishment - often smaller than life - and all the Life Lessons we can get therein. For men, it's usually learning to be more sensistive, stop and smell the flowers. For women, it's finding your inner confidence and a sense of personal fulfillment.
Whether this kind of self help actually helps... well, let's just leave that aside. What's interesting is how these stories - Eat Pray Love is another obvious example, or Tuesdays with Morrie - are getting adapted to screens large and small. While they offer what shoud be fairly compelling stories, I get the sense that this genre suffers from a certain sense of self satisfaction and a lack of real drama. "Finding yourself" isn't exactly a conflict. And trying to whip up a different one is often a lot of labor for little reward. Small conflicts do not big films make. And for me... Go big, or go home.
The Big Year is the story of bird watching - apparently, in order for John Audubon to help convert Americans from bird hunting to bird watching, he added a spirit of competitiveness, tracking, through the Audubon Society, people who could see the most species of birds in one year. To do this, especially now, requires a great deal of travel and a sense of commitment. Or so we are told.
Jack Black plays our shambling hero, a nice young man with binoculars and a dream. He is joined in his quest by a retiring CEO finally using retirement to take that long planned journey... and both men are competing against last year's champion, a dedicated watcher who has made the quest his whole life, to the detriment of those around him.
Along the way, Black reconciles with his gruff Dad (Brian Dennehy, at his gruff stolid best), our CEO learns how to slow life down to life's terms, and the fanatical champion learns... nothing. Or something. I wasn't really sure.
As a movie all about men learning How To Live Their Best Life, The Big Year is a bit of a snooze. The Black-Dennehy daddy issues aren't especially subtle or deep, The CEO is Steve Martin at his most charming, and Owen Wilson puts an interesting spin on his single minded character, but there's just not much there. These characters are sketches, and acting alone can't fill in every blank. Wilson gets especially shortchanged. Martin can do this aging good guy in his sleep, and one years for the sly, subversive comic genius of past decades. Black is, as usual, terrific at reminding us how cheerfully underrated he is. But that's about it.
Filled with lush, gorgeous nature shots and plenty of bird closeups, The Big Year balances storytelling and travelogue well enough, giving us some insight into the world of the most diehard birders (it's mildly interesting to learn about Atu, the furthest Aleutian Island, and why it's a bird haven in late spring). But The Big Year isn't so much about birds and nature as it is about the Quest... and the quest here just isn't that dramatic. No offense to bird watching.
Probably more problematic is that The Big Year perpetuates a Hollywood fantasy about Americans and class distinctions that's even more fancicul than ever in these hard times. Black's character is an hourly worker who essentially can't afford his Big Year plans... yet the struggle for funds and solvency is only sketched at, and by midway through, just about ignored. It helps that Martin's CEO is both wealthy and good hearted, the dream most of us want of a life with a friend who could foot the extravagent bills, few questions asked. Martin's casual wealth is admired, and it looks swell. How many of us have the option of champagne filled New Year's in our Aspen retirement cabin? Not so much. Or at least... that's what they keep telling me about Occupy Wall Street and the 99%.
And the point, really is that these "self help" problems of finding yourself, chasing your dreams, living in a world outside of 9-5 jobs and responsibilities... these are luxury problems, divorced from much of the real struggles we - all 99, or at least 55, of us - face every day. The Big Year, them, is really just another dressed up, consumerist fantasy of the good life as a tale of personal growth. Spend all you want... just make sure you learn a life lesson from it. And turn that into a book. Easy, peasy... no?
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