A lot of modern “dramedys” get the genre-blending done right. The Starling, set in our native Seattle, is not like that in any way, and can be held up to the microscope as a good example of why Netflix needs to have standards when passing various projects. The streaming giant probably saw the reel, said “hey, Melissa McCarthy and that tall dude from The IT Crowd aren’t bad!,” and thought it was a sure bet. But like the awful CGI bird that gave the movie its title, it really isn’t.
The film deals with many painful, and very real, subjects: grief, depression, suicide, and – probably the scariest thing to anyone – the death of a child. Yet Matt Harris’s script, which dates all the way back to 2005 and somehow made the Black List of top unproduced screenplays, never finds anything coherent to express on these subjects. Coupled with Theodore Melfi’s well-meaning but ultimately poorly executed direction, it never comes close to reality when portraying these subjects, and feels like two separate movies playing at once when you split the comedic and heartwarming moments with the more distressing ones. Melfi’s done a fine job at genre-blending in the past, with both St. Vincent and Hidden Figures nailing the comedy/drama combo in the head, but The Starling feels trite and somewhat manipulative in the way it features fun moments to juxtapose with the characters’ sad lives.
McCarthy plays Lily Maynard, a grocery store manager who moves to a new house with her husband Jack (The IT Crowd‘s Chris O’Dowd) and daughter Katie in the opening scene. Their new life with their new baby comes to a sudden, shattering end when she passes away from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). One year later, a distraught Lily drifts through her new lonely life, as Jack checked into a psychiatric hospital after attempting to kill himself when Katie died of SIDS. On the advice of Jack’s doctor, Lily checks in to see Dr. Larry Fine (Kevin Kline), a Johns Hopkins-educated psychiatrist who was promised a professorship but threw it all away to start a local veterinary practice.
At the same time, she cleans out Katie’s room, gives her baby furniture to an expecting couple, and plants a new garden…only to find herself engaging in a daily battle with a terrible CGI starling. Knowing that Melfi loves using physical representations of the abstract as he did in St. Vincent, the titular bird is obviously there to represent…something. But whether it’s grief, passion, life, or anything else, it’s just a plot device for a strange tonal shift that comes from Dr. Fine’s advice, and is the catalyst for where the film fails. Sure, the idea of three people all retreating from the world for various reasons of their own and trying to help each other return is a good one, and so is a story about a couple dealing with the loss of their child, and this film tries really hard to make them valid. But when McCarthy’s typical slapstick comedy in her daily battle with a starling is paired with O’Dowd having suicidal thoughts, it’s clear that something went off the rails. It also doesn’t help that Melfi feels the need to blare some of the worst music he could have chosen, in the form of modern “folk” bands like the Lumineers, Judah & the Lion, and Mumford & Sons, to punctuate nearly every single scene just in case we miss how emotional it is all supposed to be. As corny and dishonest as these bands sound (with the exception of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros; they slap), they are almost in their own way a perfect complement to the film’s nature.
The acting feels just as smarmy as everything else here. McCarthy, so excellent in both comedies and dramas of the past decade, feels so hopelessly lost in her portrayal of a grieving mother and wife, which is perfectly understandable given how the script barely lets her use her real acting chops. O’Dowd, who has great scenic presence and has been likable in films like Juliet Naked and Bridesmaids, is similarly lost and confused in his role, and his depression doesn’t feel that relatable. This even happens with the recognizable faces in smaller roles, like Daveed Diggs, Isla Fisher, and Booksmart‘s Skyler Gisondo. It’s like an unruly English class presenting their own interpretation of the book and conversing with one another over which one is truly “right.”
Despite these problems, it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen. There are a few moments of honest emotion here and there — the moment where Lily tries to rub out the imprints of the legs of Katie’s crib in her bedroom carpet is unexpectedly poignant, and there is an exchange or two between Lily and Jack that aren’t just pre-packaged words of wisdom or attempts at witty zingers. But these fleeting instances do not make up for the lighthearted clumsiness of the rest of The Starling.
1.5/5 STARS