Basically, you spend a year (and a fortune) to travel around the country and see as many birds as you possibly can in 365 days. Kenny Bostick (Owen Wilson) is the top birder in the world, and he’s got the record to beat of 732 birds in a year. The challenge is to dethrone Kenny Bostick, who is as skilled as he is obnoxious. For Brad, it’s a lifelong dream and a chance to make a real mark. For Stu, it’s a lifelong dream and possibly the only big year he’ll be able to undertake. Will either of the men dethrone the hated Bostick? The Big Year is a very sweet, pleasant movie. It veers a little towards slapstick, especially in the beginning, but it finds its feet as a pleasant movie about interesting people with a surprisingly interesting hobby. Part of this is the movie’s middle section leaning heavily on various romance subplots, between the marriage of Stu and Edith (JoBeth Williams), Bostick’s drive to have a baby with his wife Jessica (Rosamund Pike), and Brad’s budding romance with Ellie (Rashida Jones). Some of them (Black and Jones) are very sweet. Director David Frankel has experience with this kind of comedy, thanks to previous work on The Devil Wears Prada and Marley And Me. He knows his way around an emsemble, and he does a good job balancing the storylines and working the slapstick into a more realistic setting. It’s not perfect, but it’s about as good as can be expected from the script written by Howard Franklin and based on Mark Obmascik’s book. I imagine it’s a way to make birding interesting for people who aren’t interesting in birds, but it kind of detracts from the point of the movie. These are normal folks with an interesting hobby, the slapstick is a distraction from the incredible verbal comedy skills possessed by the stars. That said, if you’re going to go slapstick, make a slapstick comedy. If you’re going to make a witty comedy, make a witty comedy. It’s tough to combine those two elements, as well as have a dramatic subplot about troubled marriages. There’s just too much going on.    US correspondent Ron Hogan has never been a birder, but the variety of birds shown in this movie has him interested in learning about our feathered friends. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.