Big Miracle (2012)

I’m sorry if I’ve been really slow on the movie reviews front. Fact is, movie watching takes time and it takes even more time to write the review because I’m not as talented as all of you movie bloggers out there.  Plus, not being home doesn’t help especially when I’m travelling with a dying tablet that only lets me read e-books and my phone is also on its last leg of functionality.  So, I’m working on it but I ended up not getting most of the May expiring Netflix movies seen.  I started Love is a Many Splendoured Thing and gave up because I kept dozing off and getting massively angry and frustrated at the lady.  But before completely losing all the movies on Monday, I managed to squeeze in Big Miracle, which I’ve wanted to see for a while.

Big Miracle (2012)

Director: Ken Kwapis

Cast: Drew Barrymore, John Krasinski, Ted Danson, Ahmaogak Sweeney, Kristen Bell

In small town Alaska, a news reporter recruits his ex-girlfriend – a Greenpeace volunteer – on a campaign to save a family of gray whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle.- IMDB

Based on real life events (that I’ve never heard of), Big Miracle surrounds itself with a decent cast and a heartwarming story about the environment, global warming, and helpless whales and working together through differences.  I have a soft spot for these movies and regardless of how cliche these family dramas always turn out to be, they usually charm me a whole lot. This one had John Krasinski, who I can’t seem to remember where I saw him last and the lovely Drew Barrymore who always ends up making me like her movies despite me never regarding her as a great actress.  Still, she is fantastic because she always knows how to pick mostly feel good movies.  Big Miracle is no exception.  Plus, I’m a huge animal lover especially sea animals so whales and just coming back from Alaska made me feel just a tad closer to the whole thing.

What is really commendable about this is that there’s a lot of messages being sent here and at the end of it all when the credits roll, we see real snippets of the actual event this was based on and who each character in the movie was playing.  I always like that sort of thing, even though I never go seek out how true it stays to the real thing (which I should). Its always touching when an event can bring together everyone and their differences, even change some views.  Like how everyone does things whether political, social, financial, environmental, all for their own benefit and motive and just how passionate some others are completely about giving their all to understand and do absolutely anything to save others (animals included) who may not look helpless but actually are.  In the end, regardless of what those motives are, the cause itself will always change someone’s mind and its these little changes and push our world to become hopefully a better place.  I mean, I’m being really simplistic and naive here probably but sometimes that is all it takes.

On top of all that dramatic stuff with the whales and even the love story injected into Big Miracle, there’s also a lot about connecting with animals in the tradition of the original people that inhabited there.  I can’t remember the name right now.  Damn memory.  Still, the grandfather and the kid has a really good relationship where you can see the outside world affecting how the young ones are and how they are being modernized and seemingly forgetting their roots bit by bit as the outside world invades Barrow, Alaska.

There’s only so much I can say about this.  Big Miracle may be predictable and cliche but there is no doubt that it is extremely effective as a heartwarming, tear-jerking, at times funny and extremely passionate family drama about saving whales.  Its definitely worth your time.  I know I got a little misty near the end (but then as I get older, I tend to get all emotional easier).  The story is really great and the fact that this actually happened makes me feel just pretty great also.

Have you seen Big Miracle? Did you hear of these events in Alaska about saving the three gray whales?