Pretty Bird is the rocketbelt caper movie definitely not based on my Rocketbelt Caper book. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008, received some pretty bad reviews, failed to find a distributor, and eventually got a straight-to-DVD release in the US a couple of weeks ago. A copy finally landed on my doormat this week. Worth waiting for? Absolutely not.
I should emphasise from the start that I had no involvement or contact with anyone involved in the production of Pretty Bird, so I when I say it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen I’m doing so from a (thankfully) detached position.
Pretty Bird is pretty bad. Perhaps not M Night Shyamalan bad, but still pretty woeful. But my overriding feeling after watching it was one of bafflement. Pretty Bird is just so odd, so half-hearted, so dull that it’s hard to figure out what exactly it’s trying to achieve.
The meandering first hour sees quirky entrepreneur Curt (Billy Crudup) recruit rocket propulsion expert and super-grouch Rick (Paul Giamatti and moustache) and chequebook-happy bed salesman Kenny (David Hornsby) for an unspecified scheme that is eventually revealed to involve building a rocketbelt.
What’s so special about this rocketbelt, the device around which the whole movie and any conflict within it hinges? Why are these guys so driven to build it, to fly it, to fight over it? We never find out. They build the thing without much effort, Curt and Rick fall out over nothing much, Kenny’s money runs out, and the rocketbelt disappears. And that’s pretty much it. It’s all deeply unsatisfying.
Although the leads do perfectly fine jobs, they’ve got very little to work with. The script is bland, the characters are underdeveloped, and the little conflict that exists is introduced too late. It’s pitched as a comedy, but there’s nothing remotely funny in it. It’s a really difficult movie to care about.
I was left wondering whether production problems played any part in Pretty Bird’s downfall. The best scene, Curt’s (very short) meeting with a potential investor played by Garret Dillahunt, almost seems like it’s been cut and pasted from another movie. And Curt’s romantic fling with one of Kenny’s employees, played by Kristen Wiig, shapes up interestingly, only for both the subplot and Wiig to be immediately forgotten about.
The movie labels itself as a work of fiction inspired by real events, and certainly the characters of Curt, Rick and Kenny are based on the real-life Brad, Larry and Joe. And there’s a rocketbelt in it. But comparisons with the true story pretty much end there.
I’ve no problem with the film makers playing loose with the facts. The real rocketbelt caper story is too complicated, too sprawling, maybe even too far-fetched, to be transferred to the screen without a thorough condensation of characters and events. But if you’re going to leave things out, you don’t leave out the most interesting bits, surely?
Pretty Bird makes dull work of unique and fascinating true story. It feels like a huge opportunity missed, and that’s a shame. I’m certain there’s a still great rocketbelt caper movie out there. It’s just that no one has made it yet.
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Books, Film
The Rocketbelt Caper
Amazon has this week launched the UK Kindle Store, and The Rocketbelt Caper is among the first batch of titles available there. That’s good news for UK readers, because they can pay in GBP, and don’t have to pay the mysterious extra ‘taxes and operating costs’ charge that existed when buying from the US site. The Rocketbelt Caper is only £2.25, which is remarkable value for money, even if I do say so myself. You can get it here. 
