I'm a birdwatcher and a movie lover and I really didn't want to see "The Big Year." The part of my brain that is rewarded by watching movies is very different from the part of my brain that is rewarding by birdwatching. In movies I'm focused on personalities, dialogue, and the swift progression of a plot from A to B to C to its climax and conclusion. While birdwatching, I don't want to activate that part of my brain. I want to forget other people, and not think verbally, but rather in terms of shapes, colors, and movement. I want to lose any sense of sequential time by focusing on the timeless beauty of a bird in flight.
"The Big Year" didn't succeed for me as a movie or as a treatment of birdwatching. I think the filmmakers tried too hard to make the film normal and mainstream, and attractive to normal, mainstream audiences. Owen Wilson and Steve Martin play two typical movie character types – the kind of men you meet in movies but never in real life – with typical movie character bland, blond, airbrushed, personality-free wives. That was a mistake.
Birdwatching, especially competitive birdwatching, isn't normal and it isn't mainstream. The movie should have upped the quirk quotient and really tried to get close to what it is to be a birdwatcher. A quirkier film, truer to its subject matter, would have been a niche film, but it would have worked better.
I didn't believe Steve Martin or Owen Wilson, two actors I normally like a lot, as birdwatchers. If I ran into these two out in the field, I would not believe that they were birdwatchers at all. I did find Jack Black believable as a birdwatcher. Birdwatchers are obsessive. When birdwatching, we are totally focused on birds. In that, we are like military commanders, or drug addicts, or those obsessively in love. Martin and Wilson never communicated that focus or that command. Black was able to work some of a real birdwatcher's mastery, vulnerability, hope, fascination and dedication into his part.
"The Big Year" didn't succeed for me as a movie or as a treatment of birdwatching. I think the filmmakers tried too hard to make the film normal and mainstream, and attractive to normal, mainstream audiences. Owen Wilson and Steve Martin play two typical movie character types – the kind of men you meet in movies but never in real life – with typical movie character bland, blond, airbrushed, personality-free wives. That was a mistake.
Birdwatching, especially competitive birdwatching, isn't normal and it isn't mainstream. The movie should have upped the quirk quotient and really tried to get close to what it is to be a birdwatcher. A quirkier film, truer to its subject matter, would have been a niche film, but it would have worked better.
I didn't believe Steve Martin or Owen Wilson, two actors I normally like a lot, as birdwatchers. If I ran into these two out in the field, I would not believe that they were birdwatchers at all. I did find Jack Black believable as a birdwatcher. Birdwatchers are obsessive. When birdwatching, we are totally focused on birds. In that, we are like military commanders, or drug addicts, or those obsessively in love. Martin and Wilson never communicated that focus or that command. Black was able to work some of a real birdwatcher's mastery, vulnerability, hope, fascination and dedication into his part.