Big Miracle

I wasn't really going to review this movie for the blog, but then I had to.  It's strange...
I came in today to work, and being the resident movie buff at the office was immediately asked what I watched in the weekend and if it was any good. I was about to tell them, when suddenly I drew (no pun intended) a blank. I could not for the life of me remember what I watched.

The movie was so bland, I forgot it almost as soon as it ended. But why, why was it so bland? So unmemorable? So utterly average that it left no impression on me whatsoever. Well lets try to find out as we dig into Big Miracle

The movie features many good actors, an interesting story based on real events, and a coming together of the most unlikely allies to get through, but yet the movie just never gets past a low murmur in terms of pacing and storytelling

The story is based around the endeavor to save 3 stranded whales in Northern Alaska. you would think this would make for a compelling heart wrenching story, and that the main focus would be the whales, but no. They are relegated to circumstantial participants, and the movie focuses on everything but them.

We start off as an on site reporter played by John Krasinski has broadcast his final story to his CBS network news show in Alaska, and is getting ready to leave the tiny town in search of more stories to cover throughout Alaska. Suddenly he finds 3 whales trapped under the ice, with only a small hole that lets them come up for air. The next available surfacing area is to far away for them.

So he transmits his story, and lo and behold his crazy environmentalist ex-girlfriend played by Drew Barrymore sees it, and angrily calls him up demanding to know why he did not call her up there. Once there she manages to get the owner of a big Oil company, played by Ted Danson, that's getting ready to dig for oil there to help her out.

Peter Jennings (actual footage of him) turns the situation into a Nationwide event when he airs the story, prompting tons of reporters to flood the tiny town. Eventually the media coverage forces president Raegan to call up then USSR president Gorbachev too loan them an ice breaker to cut through the massive ice wall blocking the whales' path.

Meanwhile with the help of the local Iniut tribe they cut breathing holes for the whales out to the massive Ice wall, and get them to swim there while the ice breaker arrives to smash the wall.

That's the basic premise. There are more small arcs, and plots that get brought up, and then immediately resolved or forgotten, but nothing of consequence ever happens. The story is very linear, there is no feeling of urgency or the possibility of failure. The movie simply tells the facts straight, but makes no effort to make them interesting or engaging. The characters don't evolve, most of them are quite unlikable and at the same time forgettable. Its just bland.

At the end the movie is o.k. but there's just nothing there to make it memorable. The cast had little to work with, and even though Drew Barrymore gets to be slightly annoying, as the environmentalist, she quickly drops that aspect, and is just bland. All in all whatever minor character traits and build up there was, seems to be ignored for the final act. At the end the real reason its forgettable, is because nothing ever happens that invests you in the movie, and the characters are so 2 dimensional there's nothing there to relate 2.

2.5 out 5 but note the blandness of it.