Charlie and the Talking Buzzard

...and I sure hope someone out there is appreciative. This is one slow movie that is rife with continuity errors and often throws logic to the wind. Charlie is a little boy who just moved to a tiny town. Just how tiny is it? Glad you asked! It's so tiny that only one boy actually owns a football. Ah...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

There is a constant, and truly annoying, voice-over done by a buzzard in this movie. Whether the bird actually talks is open to interpretation. At the start of the film, the buzzard carries on a conversation with a gentleman working on a fence. However, nobody ever talks to the bird for the rest of the movie and they show no indication of hearing the bird talk. Go figure.

OK...back to the football. Charlie sees some kids playing football but they won't let him play. Long story short, they only have one football and it's all patched up and keeps deflating. The thing finally busts for good but Charlie has an ingenious plan. He orders one through the mail (because evidently you can't buy one in this town!) and it quickly arrives. He shows it off in front of the other boys and they suddenly want to be his buddy. So how does this progress the plot? Hmm...it really doesn't but there's not much going on in this film and I have space to fill here.

The plot, so much as it is, consists of the following convoluted nonsense. The mayor of the town is stealing fireworks from the town's fireworks factory (which is the town's main employer). His idea is that the factory will go out of business and most of the people will move out of town. He will then buy their land for dirt cheap and hang on to it until...the freeway is built through town! Then, of course, he will reopen the defunct factory and sell the houses to his new employees for a tidy profit. I guess this is what passed for a "plot" in '70s kids movies.

As I'm sure you can surmise, it is up to Charlie, his buzzard guardian and a few friends to help bring this nefarious scheme to a halt. Look for a much younger (and skinnier) Chris Penn in his first film role. Also be sure to look out for countless "goofs" which occur in the movie. If you drink a beer (21 year olds and over please) for each mistake you spot then you just might be lucky enough to pass out before "Charlie and the Talking Buzzard" reaches its not-so-thrilling conclusion. 2/10

When I found a copy of this movie (under the title "Buzzard") at my local thrift store (still wrapped in its original plastic wrap!), I though I had found a movie so unknown that no one at the IMDb would have previously written about it. As you can see, I was wrong, but I'm still pretty sure that there can't be that many people who know about this obscurity. It's a strange movie - it barely gets past the hour mark before ending, for one thing. It has Dean Cain in a real early role that I'm pretty sure he doesn't list on his resume. And while the title of the movie puts the character of the buzzard in it, the buzzard does almost nothing that influences the human characters, spending most of its time making a bunch of wisecracks on the soundtrack that gets old REALLY fast. To be fair, the movie has a laid back style that makes it refreshing compared to the hyper kinetic family movies nowadays. But the movie is TOO laid back - it takes about half of the movie to go by before the movie's real plot starts! The movie may be of interest to fans of real obscure movies and/or weird family movies, but even those people might find their patience tested.

That Chris Hanks was awesome... the relatively unknown Chris Penn was functional and Dean Cain clearly has some potential.

(1) the birds - Hitchcock (2) angry birds (3) Charlie and the talking buzzard.

Where is Chris Hanks now would be my only question? Has he moved on to the foreign bird movie industry. Another great child actor gone sideways? Is he hanging out with McCauley Caulking. Either way, this movie is great for helping with insomnia.

I think shortly after this movie in 1979, Chris may have helped the Iranians with the hostages. Maybe.... I do t have any actual proof, but the timing is impeccable.

What an amazing performance by the legendary buzzard whisperer Chris Hanks!! I couldn't actually watch this because I was born the year it was made so LAME but.....Bad buzzard is an actual movie with the Chris Hanks bird loser guy validated my will to live and simultaneously reconnected me with my German cousins that we've been hiding from for 80 years, so also lost my will to live again. Thanks for nothing Chris Hanks, great movie but seriously we just wanted to hide from the furor but they've found us and you've basically killed my whole family and now I regret watching your movie. My family will forever hate you.

A little boy has a tough time adjusting to his new rural environs, and can't seem to fit in with the other local boys(in a nothing-little town with about five kids living in it, you'd think they might make an effort to establish some sort of mutuality).

The director does a marvelous job of drawing the viewer into the picture...you can really feel the hick-town boredom. No...I mean, REALLY feel it. Around seventy minutes of it. It's sort of like THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, but without all that pointless character analysis and forceful iconography. BUZZARD is a minimalist work...it's powerfully plain. Flattened, washed-out, and unstimulating, because it's supposed to be that way...a "less is more" type of thing. They nailed it. It should probably be noted that there's a random wisecracking buzzard on-hand to narrate this steamrolling dreadnought of unseasoned dormancy. It has no direct placement in the proceedings, it just keeps us abreast of things as they're happening. That way, it almost seems like things ARE happening. See? You can have an expository device without a story. That's what they did here. It's supposed to be like that.

A film for the whole family to enjoy, especially if your kids are on Adderall. You can take one too, it's okay!