PAULIE

• Starring Gena Rowlands, Jay Mohr and Tony Shalhoub
• Directed by John Roberts
• Rated PG, with mild action violence and language; running time 92 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 7

By Jack Garner
Staff film critic

(April 17, 1998) -- If dogs can do it, why not a parrot?

Paulie is a likable new family film about a parrot who goes through a cross-country adventure to rejoin the child he loves. Think Lassie, Come Home or The Incredible Journey, but substitute a bird for the canines.

To tell this heartwarming pet fable, director John Roberts takes the high road with a talented, eclectic cast. Gena Rowlands, Tony Shalhoub, Bruce Davison and Cheech Marin offer their shoulders to the bird.

As Paulie the parrot, Roberts cast 14 look-alike blue-crown conures (and one undetectable animatronic version, for a few especially challenging or dangerous sequences). The birds were cleverly trained by Boone Narr, who handled the mice for Mouse Hunt.

Screenwriter Laurie Craig follows the traditional pet-odyssey formula. Paulie is the beloved pet of Maria, a lonely little girl with a stuttering problem. Her frazzled father sees the bird as trouble. He unloads the pet and the family moves away.

Paulie then finds himself entangled, at various times, with a pawnbroker, a sweet-natured widow with a motor home, a Latino entertainer, a low-life con man, a mean-spirited ornithologist and a kindly, immigrant janitor.

Paulie narrates his own story, telling it in great detail to the janitor (Shalhoub), who's willing to listen: "I'm Russian," the man says. "I like long stories."

All the while, Paulie tries to keep moving west, because he's learned that Maria has moved to Los Angeles.

And that brings us to the filmmakers' one major cheat. Paulie is a parrot who out-thinks, out-talks and out-wisecracks his human companions. And he's got more heart than most of them.

Not to worry: Humanizing animals is a grand tradition in pet stories, from Aesop's fables to Disney cartoons to Watership Down. If Lassie can understand the need for help and run to get the cops or an ambulance, then Paulie can think as well as talk.

Besides, the bird's dialogue, performed by Jay Mohr, is funny, perceptive and warm.

It's also refreshing in an age of $20 million superstars to see a worthwhile film in which the star worked for peanuts ... and seeds and bugs.