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Can I claim The Big Year? I won't have time for a pitch until later, but I really like that movie. I think it bombed because it was sold as a comedy with a bunch of comedic actors, but it's not all that funny. Which is OK. e: The Big Year Budget: $41 million Box Office: $7.45 million Every review seems to call this movie a 'comedy,' which is indeed what it is billed as - a Caddyshack with birding instead of golfing, say. And there are some genuinely funny moments. But this is not a particularly funny movie, and that's OK. It's instead a great example of how labels and expectations affect the ways we watch movies. Sure, a movie starring Jack Black, Steve Martin, and Owen Wilson, about birders in a competition to see the most birds, sounds like it's going to be madcap. But The Big Year is instead what happens when instead of the competitive hijinks of something like It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World/Rat Race you're faced with a sometimes funny, sometimes bittersweet discussion of the constant push and pull in all of our lives between greatness and happiness. In addition to the marketing and expectations issues, this is a movie that really speaks to the ambitions and dreams (and concomitant fears) of people around ages 30 and 65, and how those ambitions and dreams are sometimes achieved, sometimes deferred, sometimes changed, and sometimes forgotten. It's a part of life unknown to those in their teens and 20s and easily ignored by those in their 40s but which seems so frightening to those looking ahead to - or behind at - a lifetime spent in apparent mediocrity (or a lifetime spent achieving greatness, along with its equally great sacrifices). I really wouldn't pretend that it's a great movie, per se, especially in that while it mostly avoids over-sentimentality it occasionally drifts that way, but it's certainly a very good movie. Xenophon fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Sep 7, 2013 |
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Sep 7, 2013 20:39
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 08:43 |
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