The Birder

Oddball to the point of annoyance, The Birder follows Tom Cavanagh’s mild-mannered Ron Spencer as he’s forced to reevaluate his life after losing a promotion to a younger, slicker competitor (Jamie Spilchuk’s Floyd). Filmmaker Ted Bezaire establishes a tone of off-kilter quirk that sets the viewer on edge right from the outset, with Bezaire and Michael Stasko forcing the movie’s various characters into situations of an almost oppressively tedious nature (ie there’s an entire subplot revolving around Ron’s efforts at sabotaging Floyd’s big presentation to the community). It doesn’t help, either, that the narrative has been suffused with insufferably off-the-wall supporting figures, with the ongoing presence of Ron’s loopy friend Ben (Mark Rendall, delivering a performance that vacillates wildly from irritating to endearing) certainly standing as the most obvious example of this. The few heartfelt, authentic moments are subsequently rendered moot by the pervasively eccentric atmosphere, and it naturally becomes more and more difficult to work up any interest in or enthusiasm for the protagonist’s continuing struggles (ie it’s impossible to wholeheartedly care how this all turns out in the end). The Birder straddles a line of consistent mediocrity to such a degree that it basically remains watchable from start to finish, and yet it’s difficult not to wish that Bezaire and company had endeavored to create something just a little more ambitious and original.

** out of ****