"Big Miracle" is the true story of how--in 1988--politicians, the media, hunters, environmentalists, big oil, the US Army Reserve and the Soviet Navy all managed to put aside their differences to cooperate in rescuing a family of gray whales from under the Arctic tundra. Something unlikely to happen again in this era of hair-trigger tempers and hyper-partisan dehumanization of those with differing opinions.
The opening and closing narrations are by Ahmaogak Sweeney as a native boy caught in the middle of the excitement, but all other narration is provided by Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and the late Peter Jennings from actual news broadcasts. And just to emphasize that the story is really true, footage of the actual people involved is shown alongside the actors who played them during the final credits.
The main characters in this drama are John Krasinski as struggling TV reporter Adam Carlson and Drew Barrymore as a Greenpeace activist Rachel Kramer who just happens to be Adam's ex-girlfriend. Adam sees the story as his catapult to network news (thanks to his sucking up to equally ambitious Jill Jerard played by Kristen Bell), while Rachel sees it as a moral imperative.
There are also lots of subplots involving Ted Danson as the CEO of a big oil company, Dermot Mulroney as the commander of an Army Reserve unit, Vinessa Shaw as an aide to President Reagan, and Rob Riggle & James LeGros as a pair of inventor brothers. But for me, the most interesting character was Barrymore as Rachel, who has to learn the hard way that you can't convince Inuits to stop whaling by calling them murderers, that you can't get people to care about the environment by lecturing them, and that sometimes you have to work with people you don't agree with if you actually want to achieve anything worthwhile--a lesson the tea-partiers and Wall-Street-Occupiers could use a dose of.
I also really liked Krasinski bringing lots of humor to the proceedings (the eyeball-licking scene had me rolling on the floor). And while this film is rated PG, I didn't really notice any kind of pandering to a kid audience and the mild language didn't seem forced (i.e. there was no clear instance of characters saying "drat" when the screenwriters clearly had an f-bomb in mind).
The film was also a fairly realistic portrait of a time when many didn't have cable, only a handful had cell phones and almost no one used the Internet. The only real anachronism I found was Ted Danson's glasses (back then, big round lenses were fashionable, not the narrow square lenses of today). And a minor detail was that virtually all the men's real-life counterparts had mullets and/or mustaches, but none of the actors had bad hair and only Stephen Root grew a 'stache for the role.
This is not an Oscar-worthy drama. Unless 2012 turns out to be a really bad year for movies, it won't make anyone's 10-best list. But as far as feel-good comedy-dramas and movies "inspired by" true events go, this is above average. Plus it give us a reminder that our differences can be overcome for the greater good if we can just take off our partisan blinders for only a moment.
The opening and closing narrations are by Ahmaogak Sweeney as a native boy caught in the middle of the excitement, but all other narration is provided by Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and the late Peter Jennings from actual news broadcasts. And just to emphasize that the story is really true, footage of the actual people involved is shown alongside the actors who played them during the final credits.
The main characters in this drama are John Krasinski as struggling TV reporter Adam Carlson and Drew Barrymore as a Greenpeace activist Rachel Kramer who just happens to be Adam's ex-girlfriend. Adam sees the story as his catapult to network news (thanks to his sucking up to equally ambitious Jill Jerard played by Kristen Bell), while Rachel sees it as a moral imperative.
There are also lots of subplots involving Ted Danson as the CEO of a big oil company, Dermot Mulroney as the commander of an Army Reserve unit, Vinessa Shaw as an aide to President Reagan, and Rob Riggle & James LeGros as a pair of inventor brothers. But for me, the most interesting character was Barrymore as Rachel, who has to learn the hard way that you can't convince Inuits to stop whaling by calling them murderers, that you can't get people to care about the environment by lecturing them, and that sometimes you have to work with people you don't agree with if you actually want to achieve anything worthwhile--a lesson the tea-partiers and Wall-Street-Occupiers could use a dose of.
I also really liked Krasinski bringing lots of humor to the proceedings (the eyeball-licking scene had me rolling on the floor). And while this film is rated PG, I didn't really notice any kind of pandering to a kid audience and the mild language didn't seem forced (i.e. there was no clear instance of characters saying "drat" when the screenwriters clearly had an f-bomb in mind).
The film was also a fairly realistic portrait of a time when many didn't have cable, only a handful had cell phones and almost no one used the Internet. The only real anachronism I found was Ted Danson's glasses (back then, big round lenses were fashionable, not the narrow square lenses of today). And a minor detail was that virtually all the men's real-life counterparts had mullets and/or mustaches, but none of the actors had bad hair and only Stephen Root grew a 'stache for the role.
This is not an Oscar-worthy drama. Unless 2012 turns out to be a really bad year for movies, it won't make anyone's 10-best list. But as far as feel-good comedy-dramas and movies "inspired by" true events go, this is above average. Plus it give us a reminder that our differences can be overcome for the greater good if we can just take off our partisan blinders for only a moment.