'The Starling': Is Melissa McCarthy’s movie one of the worst films of 2021?
There are few things worse than losing your child in this world. The grief that plagues the family in the aftermath of this devastating loss can potentially break apart even the strongest of the couple. According to a study conducted in 2006 by The Compassionate Friends, about 16% of couples divorce after losing their child. Director Theodore Melfi tried to capture it by showing how grief can affect couples differently in his New Netflix movie 'The Starling'.
With Oscar-winning actor Kevin Kline, Oscar nominee star Melissa McCarthy, and Chris O'Dowd as the stars of the movie and a complex subject like grief at its heart, the Netflix flick might look very promising on the paper. Sadly, when it came to execution the movie fell flat thanks to its extremely bizarre plot and failure to evoke any sincere emotions or feelings amongst the audience. Granted, there might be moments when it did make us shed a tear or two but the credit goes to the actors and their amazing screen presence and has nothing to do with the storyline.
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Lilly (McCarthy) and Jack Maynard (O'Dowd) have hit a rough patch in their marriage after losing their infant daughter. Jack has an extremely hard time coming to terms with the huge loss, so he checks into a psychiatric clinic to pick up the pieces and trying to make sense of life. What troubles Jack is how his wife seems to be handling the situation well when in reality, turns out that Lilly is just barely holding it together for him.,
Lilly, who is a supermarket employee, has resorted to hoarding snack food in order to cope with the loss of her baby. While Jack is away at the psychiatric facility, Lilly is left behind in their home trying to maintain her sanity while also struggling to cope with feelings of loss and guilt. Things get worse for Lilly when a starling makes Lilly's backyard her nest. The bird begins to harass and attack Lilly. Her obsession with getting rid of the bird leads her to Larry (Kline), a veterinarian and a psychologist. He tries to help Lilly understand that the real problem is not the bird that has made her backyard into its nest but the marital issues between Jack and her.
Despite having a huge potential of creating a powerful and gut-wrenching movie on how tragedies can eat away at people and destroy their lives, 'The Starling' stuck to its obsession with the unrealistic CGI bird. It was extremely painful to watch brilliant actors like McCarthy and Kline in these roles. "There’s something just so disheartening about watching actors as nuanced as Melissa McCarthy or Kevin Kline in roles that work against their strengths and their usual instincts in creating complex characters. It's really more depressing than anything that actually happens in the movie itself," Roger Ebert wrote.
With bad plotlines and poor handling of a subject like grief, Netflix's 'The Starling' might easily be one of Melissa McCarthy's worse films.
'The Starling' is available for streaming on Netflix.