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Boston Globe (19/Mar/1994) - Showtime's 'Birds II' never quite takes off

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Showtime's 'Birds II' never quite takes off

Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," released just more than 30 years ago, is a movie worth celebrating. So thanks to the Showtime cable channel for creating a TV event that includes a broadcast of the classic (today at 10:30 p.m.), costarring Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor. I suppose that some credit is due, too, to the Showtime "sequel," "The Birds II: Land's End," airing before the Hitchcock film (at 9) and without which we might not have been treated to the original.

In "The Birds," you may remember, Hedren plays a bored California socialite whose drive up the Pacific coast in pursuit of a handsome lawyer seems to invite disaster. We never learn exactly why a sea gull rakes her head, drawing blood, or why large concentrations of birds mass around Bodega Bay, attacking people with what seems like hateful energy. "The Birds" is artfully odd, viscerally disturbing less because of what it shows physically than what it suggests psychologically and morally.

The main characters are morally flabby. The fierce birds seem bent on cutting them down to size. When they're not staging swooping raids, the roosting ravens, in particular, evoke hideous, cackling little hanging judges. The scenic original, punctuated with flurries of motion, is finally less satisfying as a thriller than as a meditation studded with surprises. It endures because it is philosophically open-ended, subject to several equally provocative and valid interpretations.

The birds could be Hitchcock's harsh, winking commentary on man's insignificance or sinfulness. Or, more simply, they could stand as darkly fluttering symbols of death itself: No amount of ingenious fighting back or battening down can keep the dreadful, sharp-beaked creatures at bay.

Where "The Birds" is metaphysical, "The Birds II" is merely physical, but even on the purely visceral level it's a disappointment. One would imagine, given the advances in special screen effects, that the latter-day "Birds" would at least soar technically. But the effects are no better than Hitchcock's — and his were often deliberately stylized, more suggestive, even poetic, than realistically menacing or graphically gory.

To the new movie's credit, it doesn't exist simply to uncork bloody bird vs. man warfare. It tries, however clumsily, to tell a story — one that, let's be clear, is not so much a sequel to the original as a tiredly and predictably updated version of it.

In "Birds II," a family of four has chosen to spend the summer away from the distracting urban bustle, off the East Coast on Gull Island. The first bird attack occurs when the father (Brad Johnson) — passive, preoccupied and unable to do the work he's brought with him — is slapping some paint on the summer place. During the movie's halfhearted attempts to summon some of Hitchcock's deeper mysteries (things are awry; the family is momentarily dysfunctional), I kept wondering why the dad was painting a rental property.

There are a few nice touches, including variations on Hitchcock's sly humor — the family gathering, for example, around a plump roast chicken not long before the first strafing incident. And in a fair attempt to mime the master, the film shows ravens evilly cackling nearby when Ted embraces his wife, May (Chelsea Field), trying to re-ignite their relationship. The acting isn't bad (Hedren herself is on hand as a local shopkeeper), but the script is too soft to inspire any bite.

"The Birds II" is lazily conceived and, worse, far too literal. Its final eco-explanation for the revenge that nature seems to be taking on civilization could have been devised by a second-grader.

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