From the trailer for "Big Miracle," audiences might hope for a big filmmaking miracle, for the movie to be a worthwhile experience. While "Miracle" never excels, it is not nearly as bad as the preview may suggest.
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Based on Tom Rose's book "Freeing the Whales: How the Media Created the World's Greatest Non-Event," the film depicts Operation Breakthrough, a 1988 effort by the U.S. government to rescue three whales trapped in a gridlock of Alaskan ice.
Billed as a romantic drama, "Big Miracle" is refreshingly platonic. With Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski playing the lead duo, viewers may anticipate a love story. But what they will find is that the whales steal the spotlight.
Nicknamed Fred, Wilma and Bam Bam, these three gray whales are stranded five miles from the open sea by a block of solid ice. Adam Carlson (Krasinski) is covering an inane local news story when he spots them, confined to a small open-air patch of water. He calls in a local whale expert, who determines that the animals likely have only a few days to live.
Adam reports the story, and the coverage makes its way onto national television as a filler piece. The whales' sad tale wins the hearts of Americans, including Rachel Kramer (Barrymore), an avid Greenpeace worker and Adam's ex-girlfriend.
Rachel heads to Alaska and manages to publicize the situation, dragging Ted Danson as oil driller Liam Peterson into the rescue mission. Kristen Bell rounds out the suitable — if uninspiring cast — as Jill Gerard, the bright-eyed, ambitious newsgirl that Rachel might have been in another life.
The acting in "Big Miracle" sadly keeps the actors in their familiar, typecasted roles — Krasinski is still the easygoing straight talker from "The Office," and Barrymore is as impulsive and stubborn as ever. The other members of the ensemble all serve their purposes, but none of them manage to bring depth to their respective roles.
Indeed, the plight of these animals was a story important enough to make the national news in 1988 and to warrant the involvement of President Reagan and the Soviet Union. With clips of real footage from Operation Breakthrough, "Big Miracle" has just enough historical intrigue and veracity to disguise that it — like the story's inspiration — never amounts to anything.
