BEFORE: I'm sorry if you're disappointed that my next film isn't "Ambulance", with Jake Gyllenhaal carrying over. I considered it, but then I didn't see from there how to get to my Thanksgiving films, which are going to link to my Christmas films, eventually. I can only follow one link a day, so that means there are often three or ten links that I DON'T follow, and tonight the link to "Ambulance" is one. I have to look at the big picture right now, which films are going to get me to where I need to be in a week or so? This one fits the bill. (I just realized that "Ambulance" links to tonight's film, so I COULD have squeezed it in, but then again, I don't have any spare slots for the year, after I added "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story", they're all spoken for.)
Edi Patterson carries over from "The Guilty".
THE PLOT: After Lilly suffers a loss, a combative starling takes nest beside her quiet home. The feisty bird taunts and attacks the grief-stricken Lilly. On her journey to expel the bird, she rediscovers her will to live and capacity for love.
AFTER: Well, I've got my loose theme for the week, this week's films are about redemption, and getting over things and chance encounters sparking those things, perhaps. This was seen in "Kajillionaire" when a family's chance encounter on an airplane with a young woman who had an interest in con games led to a confrontation between the daughter and her parents over the way she was raised without love or emotion, but it also led to the daughter getting over that, maturing and finding a relationship. And in "The Guilty", a chance encounter with a woman who called 911 led to the main character, a demoted policeman, coming to terms with his misdeed and finding a form of redemption in admitting to his guilt. And in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story", Al's chance encounter with a traveling accordion salesman put him on the road to fame and fortune. I'm not joking here, that happened in the film, and in real life, too.
In this film, after a brief intro with a couple, Lilly and Jack, painting a bedroom for their newborn child, the story flashes forward to some future time, when the husband is in a mental institution, having had a tough time dealing with the death of their child. Lilly's grieving too, but in a different way, and she's trying to hide it, but not doing a good job of that. While her husband is recovering (we later find out exactly why he was institutionalized, but it's not hard to guess why) she's also dealing with the loss of him, in a way. Her husband's doctors also suggest that Lilly should see some kind of therapist, and they recommend someone close to her home, who turns out to be a veterinarian and former shrink. At first this seems like a big mistake, like how could the doctor who recommended him not check to see if he was still practicing? Wouldn't they check that sort of thing before giving out his number?
It seems like I should call a super-huge NITPICK POINT on this little wrinkle in the story. Like, so how could this recommendation error happen in the first place? The doctor who recommended him claims to be an old friend, but then, why isn't she aware that he became a veterinarian? It doesn't make any sense, she either knows him or she doesn't, and if she knows him she should know this very important detail about him. Also, in real life aren't psychology and animal medicine two very, very different medical specialties? I mean, sure, people quit being lawyers sometimes just so they can open a BBQ restaurant, or they stop being police officers and buy a bar. Times change, people change, but still, somehow this seems like a very weird leap, from shrink to vet. I'm not really buying it, because it seems like some screenwriter just threw it in there because Lilly needs therapy at the start of the film, and an animal expert near the end of the film, so sure, let's just give one character expertise in both fields and hope that nobody notices.
By meeting with Dr. Fine - Larry Fine, but there's only one "Three Stooges" reference in the whole film (NITPICK POINT: Hey, writer, why give him the same name as one of the Stooges if you're not going to DO anything with that?). Dr. Fine is a great name for a therapist, though, he could have really marketed himself with that. "Need peace of mind? Come see Doctor Fine!" or "I'm Fine, but how are YOU?" - these slogans write themselves, but the movie just doesn't go there. So I'm treating this as somebody's writing short-cut, a cheap way to get the story to go where it needs to go. Lazy writing, though.
By meeting with Dr. Fine, Lilly forms a friendship but also engages in a form of therapy - at least she's talking to SOMEONE, even if it's just a veterinarian. So she learns about the stages of grief, and she finds the strength to clear the baby furniture out of the house, and she starts to do some odd jobs like gardening, only to be constantly attacked by an aggressive songbird, the starling of the title. After being attacked by the bird several times in her yard, she takes to wearing a football helmet as she works on the garden. I'm not quite sure what the bird stands for here, but at least the gardening is a great metaphor for recovery from grief, plus it's a worthwhile hobby that produced nutrition, food for the soul, the feeling of accomplishment. The gardening as metaphor at least works, but I still don't know what the damn bird represents.
After a few months of non-therapy therapy, Lilly is frustrated with the fact that her husband took the easy route, not just trying to kill himself but also dropping out of society, and then when he doesn't allow her to see him for a while, that's the sign that Lilly's got to work even harder to convince him to eventually get well and come home, because at some point in the grieving process, you've got to move on and get back to some kind of normal life. Sure, take some time, by all means, but you can't just stay inside forever, as we all learned during the lockdowns. OK, so maybe we missed two Halloweens and one Christmas, isn't it time for us all to get back to our normal lives, or our new normal lives?
NITPICK POINT: Lilly is so bothered by the bird that she puts out poisoned bird seed. This doesn't kill her tormentor, but it does kill a different bird, and she feels terrible. But then a little later in the film, she's back to trying to kill the starling. Huh? Didn't she learn anything from the terrible feeling she had when she killed that other bird? Also, at one point we learn that the starling is just trying to protect its nest, which has three baby birds in it. But then we never see those baby birds again, what happened to them? More to the point, why would Lilly try AGAIN to kill the starling after she saw the babies in the nest? Wouldn't those baby birds starve if she killed their parent? I understand she may not be acting rationally, but still it's a problem that I can't really follow her logic here.
I think there's the germ of a good story here, but it needed some more work before being released to the world. Somebody really needed to look at the script and say, "Wait, is this really what we want to say, and how we want to say it?" Is it OK for a wife to be MAD at her husband for trying to kill himself? If he's mentally ill, then he's not really responsible, and he needs to be cared for, not berated for his actions. Do we want to make a film where everyone's just drowning in grief, is that really what people want to see when they go out to the theater? Are we suggesting that people shouldn't spend thousands of dollars on therapists, but instead they should just go have a talk with their veterinarian? It's just a bunch of oddly mixed messages in the end - I kind of see where they were trying to go here, but it's just not the best way to get there.
Also starring Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "The Nines"), Chris O'Dowd (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Kevin Kline (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Timothy Olyphant (last seen in "Catch and Release"), Daveed Diggs (last heard in "Soul"), Skyler Gisondo (last seen in "Time Freak"), Laura Harrier (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Rosalind Chao (last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Kim Quinn (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Loretta Devine (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2010)), Jesse Garcia, Emily Tremaine (last seen in "Otherhood"), Dickson Obahor, Ravi Kapoor (last seen in "Ad Astra"), Owen Atlas, Gustavo Gomez (last seen in "Triple Frontier"), Carla Gallo (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Yvette Freeman (last seen in "The Last Word"), Dan Bakkedahl (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Scott MacArthur, Joshua Funk, Lauri Johnson (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Don McManus (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Cynthy Wu (last seen in "The Happytime Murders"), Tom Everett (last seen in "xXx"), Jenica Bergere (last seen in "Safety Not Guaranteed"), Veronica Falcon (last seen in "Voyagers"), Brock Brenner (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Isla Sellers (last seen in "Palm Springs"), Nancy De Mayo (last seen in "Love, Simon"), Jeanne Carr, Elisabeth Röhm (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice").
RATING: 6 out of 10 mispriced items at the grocery store
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