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Everyone handles grief and loss in their own way. Some shut themselves away to suffer in solitude while others crave the noise and activity of everyday life. And when a couple is faced with a devastating loss in The Starling, one hides away while the other battles a feathered foe.
The Starling follows the story of Lilly and Jack Maynard (Melissa McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd), a couple whose lives—and marriage—have been torn apart after their infant daughter’s sudden death. A year later, they’re still struggling to deal with their grief—and while Lilly is trying to move on with her life, Jack remains in a mental health facility, though both refuse to talk about their pain. When Lilly decides to start working in her garden, she comes under attack by a territorial starling, leading her to build an unlikely friendship with psychologist-turned-vet Larry (Kevin Kline).
Though it all sounds pretty quirky, though, this isn’t the kind of movie that you’d expect from Melissa McCarthy. Her character isn’t loud and sloppy and falling down for laughs. Instead, this is the kind of movie that she should be making more often. Lilly is just a normal woman—your next door neighbor, the woman at the grocery store—who’s trying to figure out how to go on living after losing a child. It’s a story about grief and loss and resilience and love, and it allows audiences to see more than just the same old side of its star. Of course, that’s not to say that this movie is always heavy and serious. McCarthy’s sarcastic sense of humor often comes out—and she can’t help but get a little too loud from time to time. But that just makes her relatable—and human.
Still, this isn’t just a straightforward dramedy about a woman working through her grief. Lilly’s battles with the bird are, admittedly, rather strange. As she works in her garden in a football helmet, discussing life with the dive-bombing bird, it all feels a little…absurd. But through her fights with the bird—her lashing out, her feelings of guilt, and her eventual acceptance—she also finds herself working through the other challenges in her life, too. And once you get used to the weirdness of it, it actually works.
Sure, there’s something a little hokey about this feathered analogy for grief and recovery. It’s a little bit like a strange story that your dad used to tell you in order to make his point. But, somehow, it just makes it oddly charming.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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