I was intrigued when I decided on the movie for my next blog post. The cast sounded pretty solid, it was a fairly interesting plot, plus what a cool title: ‘Bigger Than the Sky’. How neat does that sound? After all, what is bigger than the sky? Jupiter, the sun, space…and, as it turns out, the amount of ambiguous, non-committal semi-boredom I experienced when watching this film. Now you’re intrigued too, aren’t you? Read on.
Marcus Thomas is Peter Rooker. A plain old average joe kind of guy. Honestly, he’s just boring. So boring that his girlfriend up and takes off. She leaves him a note telling him she was no idea what she wants, only what she doesn’t want – which is him. That is cold. Life is rough for Peter, in a super boring kind of way. So when he ends up auditioning for a local community theatre production of Cyrano de Bergerac, no one is more surprised than Peter himself… except maybe me. I was pretty surprised. Peter awkwardly stumbles through his audition lines and I find myself wondering if he just learned to read a few weeks ago? Yikes. Plainly outshone by all the other auditioning talent, Peter somehow manages to snag the title role of the play, Cyrano. Bravo, Peter.
Earning a spot in the production is pretty awesome, but his theatre commitments quickly begin to interfere with the rest of Peter’s life. His promotion at work is in jeopardy, one of his co-stars is an enigmatic, adorable free spirit blonde named Grace (Amy Smart) and the other, Michael (John Corbett), is constantly waking him up in the middle of the night to drink and help make home movies of Roman centurion fights with sword props.
Peter struggles with his acting as well. He can’t seem to find the passion and emotion needed to play Cyrano. The director and his co-stars grow more concerned by the day. One day at work, seemingly out of nowhere, Peter stumbles upon the talent and voice he didn’t know he had. His boss expresses concerns about his poor work performance, to which Peter suddenly raises his voice, quotes lines from the play, and promptly quits. Just like that. Still feeling the rush of walking out on his former boss, Peter arrives at the theatre only to find the director rehearsing with another actor who he learns has replaced him as Cyrano. Too little too late. But he tells the director it’s okay and asks to stay in the play with a small role, to which she agrees.
As opening night draws near things have become increasingly complicated in Peter’s
personal life. Grace continues to intrigue and eventually seduce him, but the history and tension between her and Michael is palpable. Peter’s replacement, Ken (Sean Astin), also quickly proves to be nearly impossible to work with and I find myself wanting to grab Sean out of this movie and go off adventuring in the forest (yes, I did just make that reference).
When at last opening night has arrived all the craziness comes to a head, because of course it does! Ken is nowhere to be found, Michael confesses his undying affection for Grace which she reciprocates despite kind of leading Peter on (like, a lot), and Peter himself is late. When he finally arrives he is thrown into costume and told he must perform as Cyrano after all. Reluctantly he accepts and manages to pull off a wonderful performance. The night ends splendidly, and as the actors reflect after the show, everything just seems to fall into place. Peter has found himself, Grace and Michael are all canoodle-y, and the show was a success.
While it certainly didn’t blow me away, and I admit I was kind of bored through a lot of this film, I am compelled to single out Marcus Thomas. He did an amazing job convincing everyone that he is one of the most sinfully boring people ever. And that is kind of hard to do, I think. Maybe. Or maybe I just identified with him because I feel like I am kind of boring some days too. Anyway, it’s worth a watch. Probably just the one time though. So go, watch it! Until next time.
Bigger Than The Sky, 2005, Rated PG-13
Starring Marcus Thomas, John Corbett, Amy Smart
Directed by Al Corley
Written by Rodney Patrick Vaccaro
-Jess D (guest film reviewer)
