Big Miracle

This is a nice, family friendly film. Its relatively entertaining, an easy-ish watch if a little overly sentimental. Its based on a true story, which makes it more interesting, although it did feel a little bland mid way through. I thought Drew Barrymore did well portraying the (if anything overly) emotional Greenpeace activist, clearly determined to do all she can for the whales. However, its not at all a memorable film I'd say. Its a diverting watch but thats about it.

Characterization is totally lame.

B-

Small-towners sure are quirky, and journalists oh-so cynical, cheesy-but-harmless enough so far. The real message is about how annoying environmentalists are and how brilliantly the government, Big Oil and the military steward the environment. FFS.

Unfortunately, there's one inescapable sinkhole in this frozen yarn of leviathan struggles and icy determination. For some reason the filmmakers thought it appropriate to include volleys of foul language throughout. And so families are assailed by earfuls of ugly human sounds no discerning whale worth his fluke would ever make. (pluggedin.com)

Pros: Inoffensive, no real villains, nice people, nice story. Cons: Formulaic, superficial, predictable. I like the environmental theme, and I enjoy feel-good movies, but this is a textbook 7/10 film.

Family film. Cliche. But kind of awesome and unique one at that. Go figure.

Goofy sappy and pretty harmless. I was more interested in the archival interviews at the end though.

Fun period stuff, and there are worse family-friendly movies to get stuck watching.

Not bad, considering it's a true story.

Uneven and I really missed seeing people bundled up so that almost no skin was exposed, icy beards, eyebrows, mustaches, and condensation clouds when people exhaled.

It s astonishing how bad this movie, considering the good real life story this film is based on.

definitely not a great movie, but story is lovely and it's fun to watch

Could've been a little less cheesy (I think the Krasinski-Barrymore-storyline was the least interesting/effective one) and a little shorter ,but was fun anyway. Whales looked pretty great. Performances were cool. :> And what the fuck, was that Sarah Palin? With a lazy eye? :D

I'm a bleeding heart liberal, and yet, oh my goodness, this was as schmaltzy and over-done as one could possibly make it. How did these people get drawn into this script? That said - the kids liked the whales.

very good 10 out of 10

When it comes right down to it, Big Miracle is an enjoyable movie. It manages to overcome spotty acting and a corny script to become a smart film with deep-enough characters and some tension thanks to everything that just has to go wrong at exactly the worst time it can. It's worth watching if you don't mind a corny story and can handle some poorly acted scenes, especially if you want to see some very lifelike whales and learn about the real story that took place in 1988.