A married teacher isn’t thrilled when his troubled younger brother and sister come to stay with him.

CRITIQUE

Birds of America wants to be an offbeat dysfunctional family drama, about harried ordinary teacher Morrie (Matthew Perry, not stretching much here), desperate to get tenure, who finds his life thrown into disarray when his troubled younger siblings Jay and Ida (Ben Foster and Ginnifer Goodwin) come to stay with him.  But though the actors throw in as many quirks as they can, there just isn’t much real story here, and ultimately this is just rather forgettable.

It’s clear early that this is going to be a tale about Morrie learning to stand up for himself; he’s so dependent on his next door neighbor for his tenure hopes that he doesn’t complain when the neighbor’s dog continually poops all over his lawn.  But this storyline is clunky, while the ending is so obvious that’s it’s unclear why Morrie wouldn’t have done it a lot earlier.  As Morrie’s wife, actress Lauren Graham really doesn’t have anything to do at all, while it’s unclear what Hilary Swank is doing in the nothing role of the neighbor’s wife.

This puts all the weight on the sibling stuff, and initially there seems to be potential here; Jay is a bit crazy and sort of wants to be homeless, Ida may have some sort of sexual addiction, and throwing them in with Morrie would seem to have the potential for sparks.  But Jay and Ida turn out to be a lot less troubled as they appear, so the tale becomes less interesting as it goes on, particularly since odd subplots involving Ida’s ex-boyfriend and a molestation charge against Jay really don’t go much of anywhere at all.

Director Craig Lucas (working from a screenplay by Elyse Friedman) never mines enough laughs or knowing moments to really make this work, and though we keep waiting for things to spin in interesting directions, it just never happens.  The result is the kind of straight-to-DVD movie that just doesn’t really have anything to recommend it.

THE VIDEO

Birds of America is presented in widescreen, enhanced for 16x9 TVs.  The picture quality is okay.

THE AUDIO

Birds of America is presented in English 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround.  Dialogue, music and sound effects come through clear.  There are English and Spanish subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

Aside from a few trailers for other movies, there are no extras.

FINAL THOUGHT

Despite the cast, there really isn’t much here.