The Big Year (review)

At Last! The Movie The World Has Been Waiting Breathlessly For! The Movie That Is About Birding!

Hey, rewind there a bit. Did you say a movie about ‘birding’? The ‘sport’ that sends people across the country seeing how many different types of birds they can spot? And they don’t need to have any evidence that they did spot the bird? And it is OK if they don’t even SEE the bird, all the need to do is HEAR and IDENTIFY the bird?

Wow, it is about time to have a movie about birding. It is called ‘The Big Year’. It refers to a competition that each birder can attempt to stop as many birds as they can in a single year. And who better to star in the movie about birding than Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson. Talk about birds of a feather…

Each of the characters plays a person who doing a ‘Big Year’. And to do a ‘Big Year’, they must be very secretive and not tell anyone else about the ‘Big Year’. And if you thing this is annoying to repeat ‘The Big Year’, then try it in the movie where they say it multiple times over the first hour.

Owen Wilson runs a construction company that he never runs (he is the national leader in birding), and he has a wife that he never… well you can fill in the blanks. Steve Martin is a major executive who is about to retire to beautiful Colorado retreat with his wife, so he can leave and chase birds. Jack Black has a job in a nuclear power plant, writing code to run the plant. But he takes every other day off to go around the country chasing after birds.

They all go to some of the same places and chance to meet, but of course none of them is doing a ‘Big Year’. So they meet in Arizona, in the Everglades, in Attuk Island (in Alaska) among many other places. At every place they go to, there are many other fellow birders (none doing a ‘Big Year’). So each of the people is doing the same thing without admitting they are doing anything but a ‘hobby’.

Kenny (Owen Wilson) is the current national champion of the ‘sport’. He has a beautiful wife Barbara (Rosamund Pike), and she his third or fourth that he ignores. She is really trying to have a baby, but Stu is never around for his input (so to speak). What is does really, really well is dress poorly.

Stu (Steve Martin) is retiring from the company that he founded, so he can spend more time with his family (and chase birds). He really wants to get away from the rat race, so he can get on with the bird chase.

Brad (Jack Black) is programmer with about 100 personal days of vacation. He goes out every other day to spot a different species of bird. He lives with his parents, and his dad (Brian Dennehy) is a gruff old geezer who does not understand his son. Brad has no girlfriend and is a lonely guy.

But in the course of the story, a lot of birds are seen (or heard). Some new friendships are made, and the friendships are strained and then made again. Kenny continues to ignore his wife, and she decides that enough is enough. Stu does his ‘Big Year’ and has checked off another thing off his bucket list. Brad finds a friend in Stu, and also in Ellie (Rashida Jones) who is a fellow birder.

So every one in the movie does the best he (or she) can to spot all the birds. I wonder if that includes the biggest one, the bird that the movie producers give to the audience. ‘The Big Year’ would be better with a title such as ‘The Big Bore’.