Feb

5

BIG MIRACLE aka Everybody Loves Whales

Directed by Ken Kwapis Reviewed by Marion D.S. Dreyfus

Cast: Drew Barrymore, Kristen Bell, John Krasinski, Dermot Mulroney, Vinessa Shaw, Ted Danson, Stephen Root, James LeGros, Rob Riggle, Bruce Altman

Drew Barrymore is the very dictionary pic of a bleeding-heart liberal, and naturally, her character is a Barbra Streisand-style loudmouth (in “The Way We Were” and a dozen other irritating stereotyped Jewish campus radicals)(albeit cute) called Rachel Kramer.

We are up in Barrow, Alaska: whale country. It’s 1988. A newsie reporter (Krasinski) import recruits his ex-gal pal (Barrymore) to rescue the family of gray whales trapped under the ice up near the Arctic Circle. This event really happened. It was apparently all over the papers and on every news program for weeks. (Were you aware of this ubiquitous unfolding drama when it was playing out? What were you doing then that you could have missed this 24/7 rescue story in the far north?) Three whales caught amid a vast unbroken swath of ice, with winter closing in, intuit it is almost impossible for the family to escape into the open seas without asphyxiating.

The open space they keep surfacing in is fast icing in as the temperatures plummet to 20, 30 and 40 below. Forced to come up for breath every few moments at the only opening in the frozen waterway, and whether the whales in the film are real or animated synthesized creatures, the heart goes out to them.

They know they can’t make the miles-long swim to the open water without breathing. How the news media alerted the listening and watching public—especially school kids, but not confined to them alone—to their predicament makes for a cheering tale. Along with the good-natured indigenous Alaskans are the charming, mild-mannered talents of John Krasinski, a latter-day Jimmy Stewart, we think, for cowlicky, grinning Aw shucks-ism; the beauteous Kristen Bell (almost too pretty to believe, even as a newscaster, even in the almost total immersion cold-weather protective swaddling everyone sports) and sturdy Dermot Mulroney as a chopper rescue and haul pilot for incoming color and opposing viewpoints.

Ted Danson is a standout as a dim but PR-savvy oil magnate. (No matter how adorably such films are premised, it’s always appropriate to point a finger at the big bad oil companies and sigh with delight at the radical noisemakers at the company proxy meets. What’s redeeming here is that the Richie Rich’es realize it’s in their interest to help these magnificent creatures survive, even if it costs millions, and does not figure on the company books.) There is lots of joshing nudge-nudges from 20:20 hindsight.

The Ken Kwapis fluke-tailed nature story is refreshing, wrenching, full of icy, snowy vistas and wise Inupiak elders. It is also (Holy blubber, Batman!) full of the fattest-looking cast this side of a Goodyear blimp-assembly warehouse. Everyone is hugger-muggered in down and bulk, puffy scarves and fur-lined everything else. Faces are scraggly with ice-particled beards, and pens stick fast to the absent-minded tongue.

Among the film’s charms are the interpolations of actual news clips of Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, lovely Connie Chung, “President Reagan” and a flotilla of much-fresher-looking TV stars of today’s vintage (Larry King’s suspenders are some 23 years younger). A Russian ice-breaker and its tough crew feature prominently, as do the inklings of a Cold War thaw. Near the end, the camera cuts to a surprise talking-head TV appearance of a well-known personality, catching alert audience members by surprise, though it is perfectly reasonable to see this person in that setting at that time. Another excellent aspect is that the Inupiak are shown as deeply moral, ethical people with a great deal of dignity and thoughtfulness about their millennial ways.

No nudity. No Anglo-Saxonisms. A small cache of extraneous subplots as the predictable people find their predictable liplocks. A film for children (even if they don’t know a soul in the cast and clips of the original incident) and their parents, singles or teams of sled dogs, immigrants and fishermen.

A big hand to “Big Miracle.”


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