A knotty credit problem, to be sure.
The big star names are in a pyramid. Steve Martin’s is on top. Jack Black’s and Owen Wilson’s are directly underneath on an equal level. All, though, are given to you in the same frame.
And then come the utterly mind-boggling names in the rest of this cast list: Brian Dennehy, Dianne Weist, Anthony Anderson, JoBeth Williams, Kevin Pollak, Rashida Jones, Rosamund Pike, John Cleese, Joel McHale, Anjelica Huston, Jim Parsons, Tim Blake Nelson and on and on and on.
My God, you might say to yourself looking at this film’s credits. That’s certainly a lot of firepower for any comedy, let alone one on the subject of competitive birdwatching.
Which the movie is at great pains to tell us is called “birding” by its practitioners.
Who, it would seem, are absolutely the only ones who ought to be encouraged to see this movie.
I made it through an hour and 20 minutes of it before walking out in absolute bafflement why it was made at all, much less why it employed that truly phenomenal cast and the director, David Frankel no less, of “The Devil Wears Prada.”
Is Fox uber-boss Rupert Murdoch a “birder?” Is someone in his immediately family?
That would go a long way toward explaining why someone greenlighted Howard Franklin’s script from Mark Obmascik’s book about competitive and obsessive birding.
So, too, would it explain things if Martin were a birder and someone at Fox 2000 owed him a favor.
A very, very big favor.
Everything else about the preposterous making of this film is likely to remain more than a little mysterious. One learns from the IMDB website that, at some point, Dustin Hoffman and Steve Carell were attached to the project. One’s respect for them can’t help but rise sharply when you watch the film they wisely decided not to make.
It’s about three “birders” having what their kind call a “big year,” i. e., a year when they try to put eyes on as many different bird species as they can. The record is 732. It’s from a fellow named Bostick, played by Wilson.
Can the characters played by Martin and Black beat that record?
When a young girl wants to know why birdwatching has become a competition, her mother replies, “They’re men. If they stop competing, they die.”
And that’s a line that is neither a) true, nor b) funny. But then, even the most indulgent members of the audience will find it difficult to laugh all through this movie. (Sample wisecrack: Black’s character explaining why he’s obsessed with “birding:” “The birdseed endorsements are huge.” And that’s one of the better lines.)
Will a female outsider take the competitive prize — the fresh-faced lovely played by Jones, perhaps?
A better question: Can anyone who wandered in innocently, as I did — a fan of Martin, Black and Wilson — happily make it through to the very end of this movie?
Well, I couldn’t. As for you “birders” out there, by all means, see if your luck is better.
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“The Big Year”
1 star out of 4
Starring Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson. 100 minutes. Rated PG for language and some sensuality. Opened Friday in area theaters.
jsimon@buffnews.comnull
