Big Miracle is somewhat surprising. I went into the theatre expecting a feel good family friendly movie about whales to escape the February doldrums. That’s what I saw on screen, but I also saw something more—a smart commentary on how media “causes” are made.
Everyone knows the true story the film’s based on: how in 1988 three grey whales (amusingly named, Fred, Wilma, and Bam-Bam), became trapped under the ice near Barrow, Alaska, five miles from the open ocean. It eventually took a U.S.-Soviet partnership of sorts to send a Russian icebreaker to free them. Big Miracle is not only about what happened but more importantly why it all happened. Essentially the “miracle” in question was just one of those times when it was within everyone’s own personal interest to do the big, brave thing.
The story gets trumpeted all over the world by a media desperate for ratings. Adam Carlson (the always appealing John Krasinski) is the reporter stuck in Barrow who hopes that by breaking the story he will manage a transfer to a TV station in the lower 48, and Jill Jerard (Kristen Bell) plays a delightfully vapid Broadcast Barbie who hopes the story will get her on a big network.
Political aides under Reagan see the whale rescue as a way to improve the President’s environmental legacy while an Alaskan oil baron (Ted Danson) helps finance the operation for the good PR. Regular guys from Minnesota come up with their own de-icer machine as a way to promote their fledgling business. The Russians, of course, want their share of the credit, too. The movie even takes a thankfully unsentimental attitude toward Barrow’s native indigenous people who are traditionally whale hunters. They decide to rescue the whales, shrewdly realizing that otherwise they’ll be labeled as killers. In addition, they reason that all the media coverage painting them as would-be rescuers will be a boon to the local economy.
The one person whose motives can truly be described as 100 percent disinterested is that of Greenpeace operative Rachel Kramer (Drew Barrymore) and she’s so didactic and defiant that she not only annoys just about everyone else on screen at times but all of us in the audience as well, even if we eventually admire her passion and courage.
There’s a lot of good solid “fish out of water” humor when folks from the lower 48 find themselves in a climate where temperatures regularly drop to fifty below. Unfortunately the movie burdens us with a Jill/Adam/Rachel triangle. Except for one breathtaking sequence where Rachel dives into the water, we don’t get nearly enough bonding time with the magnificent gentle giants who started all this fuss in the first place. We just see some blowhole action and the tops of their barnacled encrusted heads. This omission is the movie’s biggest weakness. In films about animals, the non-speaking characters should always be the ones that get the most time on screen.
