Big Miracle Review: a Whale of a Comic Tale

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Toronto.com Movies Review Big Miracle review: A whale of a comic tale

By Peter Howell Movie Critic

Big Miracle review: A whale of a comic tale

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Feb 02, 2012

Big Miracle

(out of 4)

Starring John Krasinski, Drew Barrymore, Ted Danson, Kristen Bell, Ahmaogak Sweeney and John Pingayak. Directed by Ken Kwapis. 107 minutes. Opens Feb. 3 at major theatres. PG

Darren Michaels/UNIVERSAL PICTURES A movie so feel-good it cites WHAT'S HOT In Big Miracle, Drew Barrymore plays shrill Greenpeace activist Rachel Kramer, who often alienates the people she needs to win over. providence in its title, Big Miracle Gerhard Richter is like an old Disney family Painting review... - Advertisement - comedy by way of a 1980s news story. Corinna Belz’s interminable biopic on... And it is a whale of a comic tale, if also one overly crowded with characters and incidents. Mirror, Mirror review: Fair of face but... Julia Roberts is the evil Book your getaway Sticking to the main facts while fictionalizing many details, it tells of queen and... today! Spring into Wine Country for the October 1988 effort by northern Alaskan residents, the U.S. March Break Fun! military and two global superpowers to rescue three whales trapped Wrath of the Titans in Arctic ice. review: Still more... TOOLBAR There was nowhere to go but Environmentalists recall the story as a turning point in public up after... Add to Favourites understanding of nature’s fragility. But broad-strokes director Ken Report An Error Kwapis keeps didacticism in check, confining it to Drew Barrymore’s Email a friend character: shrill Greenpeace activist Rachel Kramer, who often MOST POPULAR Print-friendly view alienates the people she needs to win over. Most Read Most Commented Most Emailed

These include her ex-boyfriend Adam Carlson (John Krasinski), an BE SOCIAL Director James Cameron becomes first... ambitious small-time TV reporter who has been working in Barrow, This Weekend: Things to Do in Toronto Alaska, the northernmost point of the U.S. He’s been trying to dig up stories that will interest people in the south, maybe even network Mad Men returns; critic clams up news bosses, but he has just about run out of angles about life Deadmau5 calls out Madonna for drug... amongst the friendly Inupiat people. Mad Men’s ‘Zou Bisou Bisou’ released on...

Opportunity knocks with a hunter’s report that a family of whales — a father, mother and baby quickly named Fred, Wilma and Bamm-Bamm — have been surrounded by winter ice that arrived before these majestic creatures could migrate to warmer waters. OUR TWITTER amypataki / Nothing like singing karaoke The whales need to surface regularly to breathe, but all they have is a rapidly closing pond not "Bohemian Rhapsody" to help digest dinner. an hour ago much bigger than a small swimming pool. Too large to be helicoptered to safety, they need to find amypataki / @Chef__Hunter @scarpettato In a way past eight kilometres of ice to reach freedom and survival. the middle of Sat. nite service? 3 hours ago Inupiat whale hunters consider it a stroke of luck and an easy catch, but that’s before Carlson amypataki / @inyourmouthTO Did Gecko have his brick-sized cell phone? sounds the alarm and the world tunes in. 3 hours ago peterhowellfilm / In honor of Earth Hour, 2nite's His reports bring the righteous Kramer and also scoop-hungry media (Kristen Bell pries and #TIFF screening of THE LAST PICTURE SHOW poses), PR-seeking oilmen (Ted Danson represents the 1 per cent gang), put-upon military is B&W ... oh, wait a minute ... 4 hours ago roughnecks (Dermot Mulroney stiff-upper-lips rescue efforts) and various gawkers and hawkers, amypataki / @casiestewart @JelenaAmelia including two Minneapolis knuckleheads (Rob Riggle and James LeGros) who have MacGyvered @Linds_TO Thank you. We all need to say it an ice-melting device out of pool-heating equipment. like it is, good and bad. 6 hours ago

The many bit players in the film include fictional characters played by John Michael Higgins, Tim Follow us on Twitter Blake Nelson and Stephen Root, and real people seen in vintage news footage: TV heads Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather and a pre-politics Sarah Palin. Top Hemorrhoid Treatments Find Hemorrhoids.org's top picks.Get rid of hemorrhoids fast & safe. www.Hemorrhoids.org The Inupiat people fare better, represented in the main by boy narrator Nathan (Ahmaogak If you're 50+ read this Sweeney) and his wise grandfather Malik (John Pingayak), who bring spirit and spiritualism to the Here's a quick way to help yourjoints feel better - Now in Canada! www.Instaflex.com rescue efforts. Overstock 32GB iTouch $18 Get a 32GB Apple iTouch for $18.26.1 Per Customer. Canada Only. Perhaps most remarkable of all are the whales, animatronic robots that look incredibly real. www.NoMoreRack.com/Canada $54+ Flight Sale Airlines have slashed fares onroutes across Canada.* Screenwriters Jack Amiel and Michael Begler shamelessly but good-heartedly embellish the truth, ca.travelzoo.com no doubt egged on by Kwapis, whose lightweight TV and movie credentials include directing the Ads by Google rubber-faced Krasinski in episodes of The Office and the comedy trifle License to Wed.

They’re at their most outrageous in an Oval Office scene where an actor playing then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan calls then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, beginning the call with, “Gorby, it’s Ronnie.”

But Big Miracle also adeptly gets the tenor of pre-Internet times, when remote communications were a lot harder and the big TV networks determined what was news and what wasn’t.

We realize that truth of this when the first network broadcast of the whales’ plight happens not out of environmental zeal, but because, in the words of a cynical TV boss, “Brokaw’s a sucker for these stories.”

MORE ON THIS TOPIC Gerhard Richter Mirror, Mirror Painting... review: Fair of... Corinna Belz’s interminable Julia Roberts is the evil queen biopic on Gerhard Richter offers a silhouette more and Lily Collins plays Snow White in Tarsem than a... Singh's... Wrath of the Titans The Guantanamo review... Trap review... There was nowhere to go but Thomas Selim Wallner profiles up after Clash of the Titans, four people linked to U.S. Guantanamo Bay and sequel Wrath of the... detention...

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