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IMDbPro

A Birder's Guide to Everything

  • 2013
  • PG-13
  • 1h 26m
IMDb RATING
6.2/10
2.5K
YOUR RATING
Ben Kingsley, Alex Wolff, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Katie Chang in A Birder's Guide to Everything (2013)
David Portnoy (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a 15-year-old birding fanatic, makes an unbelievable discovery: he might have taken a photo of a supposedly extinct duck that hasn’t been seen in North America since 1878.  Upon the counsel of the Young Birders Society, David's high school birding club, he takes his finding to a legendary ornithologist, Dr. Konrad (Academy Award-winner Ben Kingsley) to solidify the claim.  With his original photo too blurry to confirm bird's identity, Konrad recommends they find the duck again before it migrates in order to get a better account of this lazarus species, but this time using a quality camera.

David and his ragtag birding crew (Alex Wolff, Michael Chen) embark on an epic road trip to solidify their place in birding history - and with girls.  Enter Ellen (Katie Chang), who is in possession of the quality camera they seek and tags along under one stipulation: she takes the first photo of the rare duck.  As they encounter other birders and a certain doctor who just might want to steal their claim, what initially seemed like fun exercise in birding could turn into a journey of discovery in more ways than they all hoped.
Play trailer2:09
5 Videos
7 Photos
AdventureComedyDrama

David Portnoy, a fifteen-year-old birding fanatic, thinks that he's made the discovery of a lifetime. So, on the eve of his father's remarriage, he escapes on an epic road trip with his best... Read allDavid Portnoy, a fifteen-year-old birding fanatic, thinks that he's made the discovery of a lifetime. So, on the eve of his father's remarriage, he escapes on an epic road trip with his best friends to solidify their place in birding history.David Portnoy, a fifteen-year-old birding fanatic, thinks that he's made the discovery of a lifetime. So, on the eve of his father's remarriage, he escapes on an epic road trip with his best friends to solidify their place in birding history.

  • Director
    • Rob Meyer
  • Writers
    • Rob Meyer
    • Luke Matheny
  • Stars
    • Kodi Smit-McPhee
    • James Le Gros
    • Daniela Lavender Kingsley
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.2/10
    2.5K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Rob Meyer
    • Writers
      • Rob Meyer
      • Luke Matheny
    • Stars
      • Kodi Smit-McPhee
      • James Le Gros
      • Daniela Lavender Kingsley
    • 23User reviews
    • 36Critic reviews
    • 61Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 2 wins & 1 nomination total

    Videos5

    Official Trailer
    Trailer 2:09
    Official Trailer
    A Birder's Guide to Everything
    Clip 1:45
    A Birder's Guide to Everything
    A Birder's Guide to Everything
    Clip 1:45
    A Birder's Guide to Everything
    A Birder's Guide to Everything
    Clip 1:01
    A Birder's Guide to Everything
    A Birder's Guide To Everything: Making Of (Featurette)
    Featurette 4:19
    A Birder's Guide To Everything: Making Of (Featurette)
    The Making of A Birder's Guide to Everything - Featurette
    Featurette 4:19
    The Making of A Birder's Guide to Everything - Featurette

    Photos6

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    Top cast30

    Edit
    Kodi Smit-McPhee
    Kodi Smit-McPhee
    • David Portnoy
    James Le Gros
    James Le Gros
    • Donald Portnoy
    • (as James LeGros)
    Daniela Lavender Kingsley
    Daniela Lavender Kingsley
    • Juliana Santos
    • (as Daniela Lavender)
    Katie Chang
    Katie Chang
    • Ellen Reeves
    Alex Wolff
    Alex Wolff
    • Timmy Barsky
    Zandi Holup
    Zandi Holup
    • Evelyn Reed
    Michael Chen
    • Peter Nessbaum
    Tobias Campbell
    Tobias Campbell
    • Rob Lindau
    Joel Van Liew
    • Mr. Edbrook
    Daniel Berger
    • Scarsdale High School Capt
    • (as Daniel G.S. Berger)
    Ben Kingsley
    Ben Kingsley
    • Lawrence Konrad
    Adam Barrie
    Adam Barrie
    • Eric
    Jessica Perez
    • Trish
    Ethan Cohn
    • Jeff
    Lucas Near-Verbrugghe
    • Trent
    Stephen Kunken
    Stephen Kunken
    • Ted
    Briana Marin
    Briana Marin
    • Mara
    Andy Prosky
    Andy Prosky
    • Carl Sr,
    • Director
      • Rob Meyer
    • Writers
      • Rob Meyer
      • Luke Matheny
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews23

    6.22.4K
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    Featured reviews

    6SnoopyStyle

    Fine cute coming-of-age movie

    David Portnoy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a big birder and is even in the Young Bird Society in his school. His mother is dead. His father Donald Portnoy (James Le Gros) is getting married to Juliana Santos (Daniela Lavender). His best friend girl-obsessed talkative Timmy Barsky (Alex Wolff) is also in the YBS. Then David thinks that he saw an extinct duck. Also Ben Kingsley plays expert birder Lawrence Konrad. The group goes in search of the duck with the help of student photographer Ellen Reeves (Katie Chang).

    This is sorta like 'Stand by Me' with bird watching for awhile. It worked better as such. It pains me to say this but the movie is better off without Ben Kingsley in the second half. There is a reasonable coming of age movie. It's nothing special or original but it's somewhat cute. I was hoping it could keep going on that trail. The arrival of Kingsley broke up the group's chemistry. It's still a cute little movie. Kodi does a great job as the geeky lead. The kids are very natural. I wish the movie kept with just the four kids in the woods.
    8StevePulaski

    The film teen birders have been waiting for but not expecting

    Since maybe 2011 (around the time The Big Year was released), it seems that the sport or birding (known informally and incorrectly by many people as "bird-watching") has been flirting with mainstream recognition. An abundance of films on the topic have been made within the last few years, and basic research on my behalf shows birding events occurring all over the world.

    "Absolutely anyone can be a birder. Except for blind people, I suppose," Ben Kingsley's character in A Birder's Guide to Everything, the latest entry in "birding cinema," if there were such a thing. The film stars Kodi Smit-McPhee as David Portnoy, a fifteen-year-old who loves birding and believes he has spotted a Labrador Duck, a species which is believed to have gone extinct. He snaps a blurry but somewhat discernible picture that erects hope that the bird is migrating to a common migration point that, of course, requires a coming-of-age road trip with some buds. David brings his assorted, quirky band of pals such as the rambunctious Timmy (Alex Wolff of The Naked Brothers Band fame), the awkward and asthmatic Peter (Michael Chen), and the group's crush Ellen (Katie Chang), pretty much because she's a female as they drive down in a buddy's car he technically didn't consent to loaning. If you're wondering where Kingsley comes in, he plays a birding expert, adding another element of diversity to his long-successful acting career.

    The reasons for chasing the bird are aplenty. A good part of the reason is the team's love and fondness for nature and the outdoors, but, according to Timmy, the benefit is that proving that the Labrador Duck is actually a living species will help them "fame-wise, money-wise, and vagina-wise." I almost forgot to mention A Birder's Guide to Everything's deals with some complex themes such as birding and the functionality of teenage hormones. The latter needs no explanation as to why I believe it's complex, but I believe birding is one of the most difficult sports around because of the fact that I think it would be hard or next to impossible to hold down a full-time job while being an avid birder. You have to be willing to travel all over the world in hopes of spotting a rare bird just for a few seconds, which will hopefully be another time for you to snap a clear picture of your subject.

    The film is another one of those contemporary coming-of-age films that follow a group of eclectic characters as they try to understand their position in life and what they're destined for in the real world. This usually helps when they have unstable homelives and are fascinated with an arbitrary topic such as birding. I use a tone of sarcasm here because of the fact that while A Birder's Guide to Everything really doesn't do anything wrong, these contemporary coming-of-age films are only a hair away from becoming a cliché. While I scarcely tire of films centered around teens and their struggles, many of these films are beginning to mesh together, what with last year's The Kings of Summer and Mud having very similar premises, despite both being brilliant films. If these films continue to be made with the same kind of quirky formula, eventually they will lose their uniqueness and become as cliché as the films centered around the nerdy guy getting the gorgeous girl.

    Even with this idea, A Birder's Guide to Everything is still a wholesome little exercise, smart, genial, and utilizes its PG-13 rating with plausibility. I always fear coming-of-age films with PG-13 ratings because that ultimately means sexual content and language are kept to a minimum, which is simply not reality in many teenagers' lives today. However, this film utilizes it conservatively but believably, not making the subject matter go out of its way to be offensive nor neuter itself to the realm of not being believable.

    It's also easy to appreciate the work by Kodi Smit-McPhee along with Alex Wolff, who got his start on the Nickelodeon program The Naked Brothers Band (but the less said about that the better). Both Smit-McPhee and Wolff have true potential to go on to be strong, capable actors in a wide-variety of work. Smit-McPhee portrays listless but not helpless in a way that works in a way that doesn't feel like a pitiful cry for cheap sympathy, and Wolff's energy and controlled goofiness carry his character.

    Then there's the fact that A Birder's Guide to Everything effectively illustrates how one man's passion is another man's bewilderment, seeing as David's father (James Le Gros) has no concept nor practical knowledge to how his son's fervent love for birding works. It's hardly uncommon for parents to be struggling at trying to identify their children's hobbies, especially in the tumultuous world we live in today, where the likes and dislikes of kids grow increasingly peculiar thanks to things like the internet. Co-writer/director Rob Meyer and Luke Matheny illustrate this by telling it like it is; David's father has no idea (or real interest) in what his son likes.

    A Birder's Guide to Everything is often just as odd as its title, but its warmness, depiction of an offbeat hobby, its quirky but realistic line of characters, and instances that beautifully detail birding and teen hormones are filled with all the tenderness and heart needed to make a project like this succeed as a whole.

    Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alex Wolff, Michael Chen, Katie Chang, James Le Gros, and Ben Kingsley. Directed by: Rob Meyer.
    10barefootjessie

    Beautiful, touching and funny

    This is a sweet and moving film that goes beyond your ordinary feel-good movie. The layered story and its characters touch on grief, growing up, family, friendship, adventure and birds. Some topics that come up are: a father-son relationship, first crush, hiking, marriage, coming to terms with losing a loved one, competition and of course, bird-watching (which you will learn about in an authentic way). It is completely engaging, earnest and real. It is gorgeous to watch as the nature scenes are beautifully filmed. The acting is honest and the characters are delightful. It is also very, very funny. I loved it, as did my 14 year old son. I would recommend it for tweens, teens and adults.
    7Buddy-51

    A charming coming-of-age tale

    "A Birder's Guide to Everything" is an unassuming little charmer about a quartet of teenaged ornithologists who go in pursuit of a duck long believed to be extinct by experts in such matters. But, as the title itself suggests, "birding" is about a whole lot more than just seeking out and categorizing rare birds; it's about friendship, camaraderie, first love, learning to let go and growing up.

    Kodi Smit-McPhee plays David Portnoy, a high school boy who's having trouble coming to terms with the death of his beloved mother a year-and- a-half ago, a renowned ornithologist herself who instilled an intense love for birds in her son that he carries with him to this very day. His grieving process is not being helped by the fact that his father (James Le Gros) is slated to marry the nurse (Daniela Lavender) who took care of his mother in her dying days. David rebels in the only way a non-troublemaking, bird-obsessed boy really can - by piling into a "borrowed" car with his equally bird-obsessed buddies and going off through the woods of Upstate New York to prove the world wrong about that aforementioned duck.

    Written by Luke Matheny and Rob Meyer and directed by Meyer, "A Birder's Guide to Everything" is filled with humor, warmth, and winning performances by Alex Wolff and Michael Chen as David's lifelong pals, as well as Katie Chang as the initially skeptical but sufficiently open- minded fellow student who joins the boys in their quest. Ben Kingley also gets in on the fun as a professional ornithologist who worked with David's mother and has a few words of wisdom to impart to the mourning lad on the eve of his dad's nuptials.

    Along with some dazzling scenery, "A Birder's Guide to Everything" manages to drive home a few basic truths - like it really is okay to march to the beat of your own drum - with its deceptively simple tale of a boy and his birds.
    9surge422

    An enjoyable, thoughtful film

    I thoroughly enjoyed this film, shown at a benefit for The Wild Bird Fund Wildlife Rehabilitation & Education Center in NYC. There's a lot to like--the characters are well drawn, particularly the teens who passionately embark on a quest to sight and document a supposedly extinct duck. There's lots of delightfully nerdy tomfoolery amongst them. On the serious side, this movie's also about loss of a loved one and finding your way forward from that. It's moving, while still remaining humorous and full of bird lore. Birders and non-birders alike will adore the nature photography. Ben Kingsly, as a revered bird expert, radiates his usual star quality. Don't miss it.

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The Labrador Duck is, in fact, an extinct species.
    • Goofs
      When the teenagers have stopped in the park to look at a bird, the sequence of who's standing where changes each time the camera angle changes.
    • Crazy credits
      In the closing credits, there is a Banvir Chaudhary and its misspelled version Banvir Shaudhary.
    • Soundtracks
      Truthfully
      Written by Jeremy Kirkland

      Performed by Jacksonknife

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    FAQ19

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • April 21, 2013 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Official sites
      • Official Blog
      • Official Facebook
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Всеобщее руководство птицелова
    • Filming locations
      • Cockaponset State Forest, Chester, Connecticut, USA(location)
    • Production companies
      • Dreamfly Productions
      • Escape Pictures
      • Lavender Pictures
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $48,713
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $21,602
      • Mar 23, 2014
    • Gross worldwide
      • $48,713
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 26 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

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