Mark Reviews Movies: THE STARLING

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | September 16, 2021

There are some things about which we don't want to talk. Death is the big one. Mental health issues constitute another, and grief is such a complicated and fragile process that there's no simple, easy way to discuss it. The Starling wants to explore all of these ideas, which is admirable, but it's also squeamish about examining them directly, which isn't.

There is a hint of wisdom to the fact that Lilly (Melissa McCarthy) and Jack Maynard (Chris O'Dowd), a married couple, don't speak of a tragedy that cost them a child, put their marriage into ruins, and triggered a debilitating, destructive bout of depression for Jack. Director Theodore Melfi's movie opens with a scene of domestic bliss, as the couple paints the walls of a nursery for their baby daughter, who coos and laughs to the beaming smiles of her parents. Some time later, Lilly is zoned out at her job as an assistant manager at a grocery, staring at the display of baby items in an aisle.

We suspect—to the point of knowing—what has happened, but initially, no one says the words. They talk around it in vague sentiments, even at the mental health facility where Jack is currently staying. For Lilly and Jack, whenever anyone asks how they're doing, everything is "fine" or "good"—statements that are a hollow reflex of what others expect or want to hear.

Obviously, the couple's baby died, and one wonders if Matt Harris' screenplay is actually acknowledging how people try to evade speaking such an unthinkably awful truth or simply trying to evade that truth itself. When Lilly, trying to put the garden in her front yard back into order, is suddenly and repeatedly attacked by a territorial bird, the latter seems likely. As the battle with the bird becomes fodder for a lot of slapstick comedy, it seems almost certain that Harris doesn't really want to address the core of his story.

It's not just the bird, though. The whole movie has an evasive streak about death, grief, and depression, treating such realities as revelations, not for the characters, but for the audience. There are a few moments of honesty in this story, when the comedy and dodging disappear, and the characters are allowed to say what they've tried to avoid or felt pressure to keep silent.

Those moments are startling, although not necessarily for the reason either Harris or Melfi seem to believe. The tone for the most part here is so alternately sardonic and silly that the movie's sudden eruptions of sincerity are jarring.

It simply doesn't work, as genuine as McCarthy and O'Dowd may be in those moments of harsh reality. Mostly, Lilly and Jack's avoidance of the death of their child is played for cutesy moments of pathos (such as when Lilly moves all of the nursery and living room furniture to the street, only to trade it all for a tacky recliner) or more direct laughs.

The bird, which keeps attacking Lilly no matter what tactics to avoid it or scare it off she may take, is a major source of the attempted humor here. It has Lilly being knocked over by the bird's aerial assaults or taking a pratfall in slow motion when she climbs a ladder to investigate the tree it's protecting. Even when the creature becomes an overt and mixed metaphor (both for the chaos of life and Jack's psychological fragility), the effort is undermined by the sight of Lilly in a football helmet.

More quirkiness arrives in the person of former therapist and current veterinarian Larry Fine (Kevin Kline)—yes, like one of the Three Stooges, the movie is quick to assert as a gag. He's recommended to Lilly by someone at the facility where Jack is staying, and while Larry insists he isn't a practicing therapist anymore, Lilly continues showing up at his office, where the doctor speaks in hollowly cryptic platitudes or performs a neutering as Lilly explains her situation.

Meanwhile, Jack avoids discussion of his daughter, hanging up on Lilly when she mentions the baby and talking around the subject with his own therapist (played by Ravi Kapoor). He's also not taking his medication and stockpiling pills, and the movie's treacly manipulation tactics are never clearer than when Jack weighs the options between those pills and a collection of sugary treats that Lilly has been bringing him.

Harris eventually gets at the heart of what has really kept this couple at odds in their grief, but by then, the tonal inconsistency has done too much damage. The Starling employs so much ironic distancing in telling this story that we can't help but feel mostly detached from it.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products