Big Miracle - 3 smiles

“Big Miracle,” starring Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski, is an engaging and often quite funny family film inspired by the real-life 1988 rescue of three gray whales tapped in ice near Alaska’s northernmost point. It’s also a romantic comedy as well as a surprisingly sharp satire about environmental politics and the media. At the center of the story is Drew Barrymore as the fictionalized version of Greenpeace activist Cindy Lowry (renamed Rachel Kramer). Rachel’s ex-boyfriend (Kransinski), a local TV reporter from Anchorage, breaks the news that local Inuits have discovered the family of migrating whales stranded in a tiny ice hole five miles from the ocean. As an army of reporters descends on tiny Port Barrow, Rachel goes to work recruiting an unlikely army of rescuers, many of whom, like an oil mogul (Ted Dansen), an Alaska National Guard pilot (Dermot Mulroney) and a Reagan administration official (Vinessa Shaw), are actually not concerned about the fate of the whales. What they are concerned about is public image, garnering votes and/or drilling contracts. Added to the mix is an ambitious young LA reporter (Kristen bell) who double-crosses her own anchorman in pursuit of a whale scoop.

With all of this going on, director Ken Kwapis never loses focus on the increasingly desperate recue efforts as the weather worsens and options to free the whales run out. In the end, it’s up to President Reagan to decide whether to call in a Soviet destroyer in a last ditch effort to unblock the whales’ last obstacle to the sea. There’s terrific chemistry between Barrymore and Kransinski and Ahmaogak Sweeney is good as an Inuit teen who serves as the film’s narrator.“ Big Miracle” also has a mix of terrific archival news footage that includes Dan Rather, Connie Chung, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. And if you stick around for the closing credits, you’ll catch a clip of a former Alaska TV weather girl who went onto bigger and better things. 2/3/12