There’s a parallel universe out there where Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black team up for a thoughtful, emotionally honest comedy about middle-aged self-loathing and male bonding, set against an ironic backdrop of bird-watching — the world’s most ordinary creatures chronicling some of the world’s most unusual ones. That universe is not our own, however. The Big Year, which does not mention in its trailer that it’s about a year-long bird-watching contest, is instead a lumbering collection of warmed-over sitcom jokes (men! They’re basically children with more money!) stretched onto an Amazing Race/Stuff White People Like framework. Are Martin, Wilson, and Black really the macho alpha-bros who’d be competitive enough to strand one another? [First Showing]
