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The Starling Review We've already had a bird slash grief story earlier this year on netflix with penguin bloom but this go round it's the starling with melissa mccarthy and chris o'dowd are you going to be adding it to your watch list after a woman suffers a loss a battle with a territorial bird over the dominion of her garden provides an unlikely avenue for her grief and the courage to heal her relationships and rediscover her capacity for love so we have a grieving couple who's played by mccarthy and o'dowd now if you've seen the trailer we see that o'dowd is in a facility to help him deal with his sorrow while mccarthy struggles alone at home while working in the garden one day she's attacked by this random bird who's pretty relentless in trying to keep her out of the yard the premise sounds a little basic and even
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weak or at least it's overly depressing where we follow a couple who are trying to move through the stages of grief now while this does linger in the sadness some it's also got some humor spread throughout to brighten our spirits as the story goes along i'm not the biggest fan of melissa mccarthy but i do believe that she has the ability to give us powerful performances and honestly i think she really needs to stay away from the purely comedic roles and then dive headlong into the drama genre she was wonderful and can you ever forgive me and currently she is killing it with nine perfect strangers in the startling she crafts a very powerful and sympathetic character i mean she is relatable dynamic raw and believable and then she still gets to take part in some funny moments i mean in fact i think she's downright hilarious in certain parts plus she gets to do a little physical humor as well but the main bent of her performance is still grounded in drama i loved watching her in this and i found myself going through a lot of the feels that she was experiencing she conveyed an awesome level of emotion for each scene that ran the gamut of feelings and as to be
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expected chris o'dowd is wonderful as well he does take a pretty large back seat to mccarthy though but he really displays a downtrodden and depressed character on the brink of despair their interactions are also heartbreaking and explosive at times but there's also some quiet tenderness that comes forward as well a great addition to the cast is kevin kline he's playing a veterinarian who helps mccarthy to identify the attacking bird and then help her also with some solutions i love their conversations and dynamic as they are pretty layered with meaning they also provide a mix of dry humor that helps to break up any looming sadness to prevent the story from just putting us in the bell jar david diggs has a small role and i always love him but he feels almost wasted in this i mean he's relegated to some very minimal dialogue exchanges now i would have liked to have seen his character interact more with odd because it felt like there was some great chemistry and that that dynamic wanted to lead someplace deeper than the story was willing to go i think cgi is used for the bird sometimes which would make sense and while it looks good for the majority of the time there were
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some sequences where the camera follows the bird over a longer course and it did look and then even feel just a bit wonky i think these can be fairly overlooked because they're not often and they don't go on for an exorbitant amount of time now there's a character played by timothy oliphant and while he's minimally on screen i found his character to be extremely off-putting but i also think that that is some of the point it's almost as if he's clueless to mccarthy's situation which did feel a little odd in the story but i tried to chalk it up to him being more inconsiderate than anything i really liked the journey that mccarthy's character goes on i mean as i said this is a grief journey but it's also a journey of restoration mccarthy brings us along with her almost inviting us to participate in the journey just right beside her without actually having to be a participant now there's a moment where she unintentionally harms an animal and while it was tough to see and even though it was brief in the following moments is where we get to see some transformational growth in the character we watch anger melt away to pure grief and regret which then leads very nicely into some reconciliation and restoration this is an hour and 42 minutes so it's not a massive time commitment and while i was watching i mean i felt the story progressed along pretty efficiently i do think it's a fairly predictable story arc but for a story like this that predictability is a comfort i mean there aren't any gotcha type moments but it's not obvious in every single turn that the story then becomes uninteresting or boring this was able to make me laugh out loud chuckle some and have my heart crushed and then put back together i loved watching the painful discord between mccarthy and o'dowd hoping that it's going to lead to a point of understanding all through their journey they navigate their grief both as individuals and then collectively the movie may come across a bit schmaltzy to some and it certainly plays into many stereotypical scenarios and arcs and especially when you're looking at the grief story but none of that really bothered me i mean i was enthralled by mccarthy's performance and i loved how she created her character i also really enjoyed the soundtrack in this it's got some great contemporary folk pop that was both soothing and engaging and we have stuff from artists like brandy carlisle the lumineers judah and the lion and nate ruse so overall this relationship drama that is centered around sorrow manages to connect us with grieving characters without leaving us to wallow in the agony the characters learn and grow find redemption
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from some very unexpected places people and then creatures while this may not seem like it's a feel-good movie i left with a satisfied soul knowing the characters that i had connected with were on a trajectory towards healing there's no sex or nudity a bunch of profanity and some violence i give the starling four out of five couches do you have a favorite performance from either mccarthy or o'dowd i'd love to know in the comments below if you enjoyed this review please give it a like also don't forget to share and subscribe i'm chris this is movies and munchies thanks for couching with me
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