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Movie Review | 'The Big Year'

Obsessed Men in Pursuit of Friends With Feathers

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By A.O. Scott

Oct. 13, 2011

“The Big Year” follows three men who are drawn into a vortex of competition, driven to outdo one another in a ruthless yearlong quest for supremacy in a difficult, all-consuming enterprise. They travel North America by foot, bicycle, helicopter and rental car, from the Everglades to the Aleutians, their journeys (and the movie) propelled by an urgent question: Which one will see the most birds?

Directed by David Frankel (“The Devil Wears Prada,” “Marley & Me”) and starring Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson as the rival ornithological warriors, “The Big Year” works hard to dispel the misconception that birding is a quiet, tedious pursuit. For the first half-hour or so it works a little too hard, goosing (sorry!) the proceedings with jaunty music, smirky comedy and action sequences that turn the contemplation of natural beauty into a frenzied stampede of oddballs.

But like birding itself, “The Big Year” rewards patience. It respects both the integrity and the eccentricity of the avian obsession, and it communicates something of the fascinating abundance and weirdness of the animals themselves. Some of the film’s feathered specimens, it’s true, have been concocted digitally, but the appeal of hunting down and visually grazing on the various birds of America is clear enough, even though the movie may not compel you to go out and try it. Birds are evidence of the miraculous and protean work of evolution and, more important, emblems of wildness in an overcivilized world. “Hope is the thing with feathers,” Emily Dickinson wrote.

Seeing as many things with feathers as possible within a single 12-month span is the obsession that unites — and also divides — Brad Harris, Kenny Bostick and Stu Preissler. Each one, for his own reasons, is trying to do a big year, to attain the summit of the birding subculture by logging more sightings than anyone else. Bostick (Mr. Wilson) is the reigning champion, an arrogant competitor who is admired and resented in equal measure, the way the New York Yankees are or the Dallas Cowboys used to be. He will stop at nothing to be the best. We learn that his insatiable ambition has already destroyed at least one marriage, and as the year unfolds it threatens another (to a woman named Jessica, portrayed by Rosamund Pike).

Chasing behind Bostick (invariably referred to by his last name in birding circles) are Stu (Mr. Martin) and Brad (Mr. Black), who have earthbound cares of their own. Stu, about to become a grandfather for the first time, is trying to retire from his position at the head of a big company, but he keeps being dragged in for important meetings. If Stu is a prisoner of his own success, Brad lives in a cloud of failure: 36 and divorced, he lives with his parents (Dianne Wiest and Brian Dennehy) and works at a crummy job. He is the typical Jack Black underachiever — he could be Lemuel Gulliver , Po the Kung Fu Panda or Dewey Finn in “School of Rock” — motivated by dreams that seem quixotic until they start to come true.

Apart from a few reliably hilarious sight gags — Mr. Black falls off a rock, rides a bicycle, paddles a canoe, etc. — the comedy of “The Big Year” is gentle and low key. Mr. Frankel and the screenwriter, the Hollywood veteran Howard Franklin, who adapted Mark Obmascik’s book , poke fun at the foibles of the birding tribe, but they avoid easy, mean caricatures. (The film’s single instance of cruelty is reserved for the nonbirding member of a pair of newlyweds on an ill-starred honeymoon.) Tim Blake Nelson, with a mustache and a curious accent, stands out from the flock, as does the versatile and consistently delightful Rashida Jones, who becomes Brad’s crush object.

The scarcity of women in the field, and their absence from the big-year contestants, is notable and a bit puzzling. Until you realize that birding is to this movie what sports, war, crime, police work and superheroing are to 90 percent of the other recent Hollywood movies you can name — an arena where men grapple with their identity crises and women function as spectators, coaches and trophies.

I mean that less as a complaint than an observation, since what “The Big Year” does best is take note of the contrasting ways birding intersects with the lives of its protagonists. Squinting through binoculars or tiptoeing through underbrush may look the same each time, but its meaning changes depending on the motives and desires of the birder.

For Bostick, birding is a vocation, the thing that gives him a sense of purpose and a shot at greatness. It also drives him away from everything else, and that is what separates him from Stu and Brad, for whom the activity is both an end in itself and a means of reconnecting with other, more important parts of life. With graceful modesty and genial wisdom, “The Big Year” peeks at both sides of this equation, suggesting the glory and the limitation of its subject.

“The Big Year” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). Some mild profanity and a racy scene of bald eagle foreplay.

THE BIG YEAR

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by David Frankel; written by Howard Franklin, based on the book by Mark Obmascik; director of photography, Lawrence Sher; edited by Mark Livolsi; music by Theodore Shapiro; production design by Brent Thomas; costumes by Monique Prudhomme; produced by Karen Rosenfelt, Stuart Cornfeld and Curtis Hanson; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.

WITH: Steve Martin (Stu Preissler), Jack Black (Brad Harris), Owen Wilson (Kenny Bostick), Brian Dennehy (Raymond), Anjelica Huston (Annie Auklet), Rashida Jones (Ellie), Tim Blake Nelson (Fuchs), Rosamund Pike (Jessica), Dianne Wiest (Brenda) and JoBeth Williams (Edith).

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The Big Year Reviews

All three actors play their usual stock characters here.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 3, 2020

The Big Year is completely predictable and full of way too many bird-watching montages set to inspiring music, but it's such an upbeat, cheery film that it's pretty hard to resist.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 23, 2012

If you can get past the obviously obscure subject matter, you'll find a really sweet film beneath.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 13, 2012

If you go into it not expecting big comedy, "The Big Year" can be an enjoyable diversion for an evening. But it helps if you like nature.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Feb 5, 2012

The movie roams through its numerous picturesque locations with a pleasant enough grace, while Frankel adds just enough idiosyncratic musical and visual quirks to keep things interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 27, 2012

Frankel and co might have taken a bolder step into the darkly comedic look of the birder's psyche and added more of a gust of air into this film's feathers ...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 8, 2011

If you are stuck in a rut and really want to follow your dreams, try this gentle, light-hearted comedy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 8, 2011

The opposite of the quiet, contemplative activity ornithology is supposed to be, this may well be the joke, in which case it's the only one.

Full Review | Dec 4, 2011

A charming little narrative movie that is so amiably ridiculous that you're sure it must have been invented... The three stars bring their most satisfying games, their comedy small and human-scaled rather than broad and slapsticky..

Full Review | Dec 2, 2011

A comedy with fewer laughs than measles.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 2, 2011

A feather-light tale that never really takes off.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 1, 2011

It's theoretically possible for laughs to be gouged out of this scenario, but you won't find them here: every move, every joke, every emotion is heaved lumberingly into place.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 1, 2011

The Big Year is as glossy and inert as Martin's face, which these days seems to require more foundation than the Burj Khalifa.

Even though it's rather corny and sentimental, this colourful comedy-drama holds our interest mainly because it's about a subject we'd never imagine watching a film about.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 1, 2011

Just a load of planes, cranes and Himalayan snowcocks.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 30, 2011

Engaging, low-key comedy enlivened by likeable characters, strong performances and an original central premise, though it's slightly undone by an overwritten script and a grating, ever-present voiceover.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 30, 2011

Owen Wilson, Jack Black and Steve Martin find a formula for blandness

Full Review | Nov 14, 2011

Veers close to being The Bucketful-of-Birds List. So pleasantly decent and hesitant to be complex that it's rather simple-minded; it just doesn't make an obsession sing to us.

Full Review | Nov 11, 2011

In some alternate universe, a much better version of The Big Year exists, one that embraces the essential, insular weirdness and romantic fanaticism of the birding community it chronicles.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 21, 2011

The result is an offence-free, mild entertainment in which everyone from cast to scriptwriter seems to be winging it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 21, 2011

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