Documentary; NR
2025
This is a documentary about extreme birding (the real title is Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching) that's only available via YouTube, so I was debating whether it would count as a real movie. But it is almost 2 hours long, and it is put together like a real documentary. If I were the guys in this documentary, I would be mad if I spend a year of my life birding just for it to not count as a real documentary.
So, the movie. It is honestly really good! I have no taste for birding at all. I know the red ones are cardinals and the blue ones are blue jays and if they're smaller and black they're grackles and if they're bigger and black they're crows. If they're any small brown bird then they're a sparrow, and so on. So I would say I know about as much as the normal person does about birds. And I still enjoyed this movie to an impressive degree.
The brothers who shot this were absolutely hilarious. The whole time I was laughing, basically. I loved seeing their adventure and seeing them progress from my level of bird knowledge into pretty good birders. And I think that the journey was honestly a big part of this movie, and I'll talk about that a little more.
People always say that "it's not the destination, it's the journey" crap and I never bought it because why would you start a journey if you didn't like the destination? But honestly, this movie kind of changed it. These guys didn't care about birding. I don't really know why they did it, but I would say that the amount of people that they met and learned about might've been worth it. If you're there for the last "thank you to..."s of the credits, you see all kind of people named stuff like "amish lady" and "homeless guy who gave us berries". And I think that's the most fun part of all of it, I guess.
And then also the ending is really good for a documentary about birds. They don't really tie it much back to the journey, I think, which is why I expanded on it so much, but it's still really nice and a great way to end it.
So yeah. ALSO! I learned a lot about birds! And also the camerawork is really great and the way that the documentary was put together was really sweet, too. The text and the shots were really carefully and well put-together, which I think is impressive for a documentary and even MORE impressive for a documentary shot by 2 brothers.
So yeah. This documentary is really, really good. The only reason I'm not giving it a 9 or anything close is because I could see how some people might find it a liiiittle bit boring if they don't care about the journey stuff and don't find anything funny. But I personally found it hilarious and really, really entertaining. Great movie. Hope it gets on some kind of streaming service!
SPOILERED REVIEW!
None :P
Am I glad I watched it?
Yes
Would I watch it again?
Yes
Would I recommend it to a friend?
Yes
Favorite Person
Q!
He has a real name but I forgot how to spell it (Quentin? Quintin? Quinten?) and his brother calls him this so imma just go with that.
He's honestly hilrious and yeah, he's the person you see most often, but still. He's reaallllly really funny and honestly? I wanna be like this guy when I'm older!
Honestly I think he carries the whole movie. I feel like that might just be because we see him the most, and his brother was still pretty funny when we saw him, but I still think he carried.
Also everyone else was just way too into birding like I can't...