Pretty Bird
Pretty Bird
R | 08 August 2008 (USA)
Pretty Bird Trailers

A comic tale of three would-be entrepreneurs who set out to invent a rocket belt. The clash of their mismatched personalities soon dissolves the business into a morass of recriminations and retaliations, kidnapping, and murder in this parable of American dreams and delusions.

Reviews
Hellen

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

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Softwing

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

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Lumsdal

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

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Nicole

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

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SnoopyStyle

Curtis Prentiss (Billy Crudup) has a new idea for an invention. He enlists the help of his friend Kenny Owenby (David Hornsby) who owns a mattress store. Mandy Riddle (Kristen Wiig) works at the store. Rick Honeycutt (Paul Giamatti) is an unemployed rocket scientist. The invention is a rocket belt but Curtis has no technical knowledge and no money.Billy Crudup is wrong for a wacky indie comedy lead. He is not at all funny. It should be much more of a dark comedy early on. Paul Giamatti is fine as a foil to a funnier character and he's also fine in a black comedy. Hornsby does his normal thing. Kristen Wiig is hilarious when she actually gets lines. In general, there are not enough funny jokes and Crudup is not the best one to deliver them anyways. It's a weak attempt at writing and directing from Paul Schneider who is usually an actor. Actually he could have played Curtis a little bit better than Crudup. The last third turns into something darker which isn't set up in the first part of the movie. I can see what this is attempting but it doesn't work.

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Tim Kidner

Actor Paul Schneider turns his hand to directing, for this, his first and only time. With the big star pull (at least now) of Paul Giamatti and a premise along the lines of inventing rocket belts (I think they've been referred to as 'jet-packs' over here) and seen in Bond movie(s), you'd think this would be better known.Or, at least available. I saw it on Film 4 and Radio Times online couldn't be bothered to give it a rating even and provided only the skimpiest of plot outlines. But it seems to be available via Amazon as region 1 DVD only, precluding the majority.It started out OK, when it was vaguely predictable. Some guys (three) seem to phone each other up and suddenly meet and next thing they're moving into an industrial unit to test their invention. Apart from some interesting and nicely diverting fantasy sequences, it's a mess. You don't care for any of them, Giamatti shouts obscenities all the time and Billy Crudup looks uncomfortable. My mind lost interest and before long concentration had melted and I wanted it to end. I don't really know where the story went, if at all and the ending was vague and stupid. Apparently, there's kidnapping and betrayal when someone steals the only rocket belt in existence....With bursts of inappropriate opera singing as background music, one could tell that Schneider is attempting satire and humour but that's completely smashed by an insensitive and heavy hand. It's no wonder that this one-time director realised his mistake and went straight back to acting!, while Giamatti must have shuffled it out of his CV.My 2/10, rather than just one, is for some of the performances and I'm sure some people would find it endearing and no doubt, amusing and all that. But at nearly two hours it's just too long and any attempts to stay afloat whilst watching it is as likely as keeping those rocket belts in the air for any length of time. Disappointing

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Cinnyaste

First, a general impression the film was mucked around with in editing. Maybe it was a scripting problem. I've seen this in the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" which was pared down and pared down. Unfortunately it cut deeply into the bone. Same thing for the "Solaris" remake.Kristen Wiig disappears. Her arc never really starts and there is no closure.The abrupt ending leads to an unsatisfied feeling.Some bad guys are introduced but never fleshed and only partially explained. One has a single scene and is never heard from again.Though marketed as a comedy (and it initially veers that way), it becomes deadly serious. The tonal shift jars and detracts.And I just wanted more.That said, I enjoyed the film. Giammati is always a joy as is Cruddup.At the root it's a character study: the volatile, paranoid and violent Rocket Scientist Giammati has a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas; Cruddup's overcompensating, delusional, near con man/President reeks of failure; Kenny, the unquestioning money man, is the poster child for ineffectual and weak.These three misfits conspire to create a rocket belt introduced by Cruddup who spools the scene from "Thunderball" in which Bond escapes via Bell Jet Pack.Off and running on Kenny's money, the trio do create the belt. After a successful test, paranoia and distrust creeps into their relationship.The dream Cruddup sold the others disappears - figuratively and literally.Worth a look. Certainly better than the average brain dead fare, but may disappoint as it's a glimpse of how brilliant it could have been. A near miss of a near miss.Read the source book instead.

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Richard_vmt

This is another quirky independent film, this one about a pair of business-oriented dreamers who are all attitude and no substance. The great idea is a working rocket belt, something neither of them know anything about. What they have instead is an abundance of business models, motivational pep talks and winning slogans.For the actual rocket belt they succeed in hiring an actual unemployed rocket scientist who begins to develop a prototype. Much of the humor is Gogolesque, treading a fine line between absurdity and apparent success. They are successful in raising money from dreamers like themselves. There is a broad satirical implication that "the money people" are a class apart requiring to be spoon fed a certain business formula unrelated to reality. Nevertheless, the project is satisfyingly rejected by the big-time investors, summarily dismissing it as needing "more science". The film is thus very amusing from the outset and I was prepared for more amusing developments. But the story takes some unfunny turns. The rocket belt becomes the focus of in-fighting which is carried almost to the point of bloodshed. This turn of plot probably because it is based on a true story.The film turns into one focusing on male bonding or the lack of it. The two original entrepreneurs are best friends with a bond that supersedes anything, including reason. The third partner, the rocket scientist, engages with the two to gain recognition, but in the long run the original promoter is implacable. At issue is the prototype rocket belt itself which he has hidden. You aren't supposed to ask the seemingly reasonable question why the scientist, who is the only one who knows how the thing works, doesn't just build a second prototype--maybe this time one capable of better than the 30 seconds flight time.So much is this an all-male film that what might otherwise have been a romance developing between the original promoter and Kirsten Wiig's character is simply dropped, as if for lack of interest. It all adds up to a flick which starts out very funny and is worth watching to the end, but with a little let-down so far as humor is concerned.

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