Paulie
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| Paulie | |
|---|---|
 The "Paulie" movie poster. |
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| Directed by | John Roberts |
| Produced by | Mark Gordon Gary Levinsohn Allyson Lyon Segan |
| Written by | Laurie Craig |
| Starring | Tony Shalhoub Gena Rowlands Jay Mohr Hallie Kate Eisenberg Cheech Marin Buddy Hackett |
| Music by | John Debney |
| Distributed by | DreamWorks |
| Release date(s) | April 17th, 1998 |
| Running time | 91 min |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Paulie is a 1998 film starring Tony Shalhoub, Gena Rowlands, Hallie Kate Eisenberg and Jay Mohr. It is about the adventures of a smart-talking bird who frequently finds himself in trouble. Jay Mohr performs the voice of Paulie, and also plays a minor on-screen character.
[edit] Plot
The film is a picaresque tale about an intelligent talking parakeet called Paulie and his long quest to return to his owner.
Misha Belenkoff (Tony Shalhoub), a Russian emigrant living in America, works as a janitor at an animal testing lab. There he encounters a blue-crowned conure which he hears at first singing in the basement, and is astonished when in perfect English it berates him for interrupting it. When he rushes to tell the scientists at the lab, the bird will not talk and he is scolded for wasting their time.
Misha becomes angered with the bird, but then starts to reminisce about his time in Russia, where he was a professor, and expresses his disdain at the fact that he is now a "cleaner of bird crap." He wishes he had someone to talk to, and the bird tells him to "join the club." At first the bird will say no more, but eventually Misha entices the bird with mangoes, after reading that this species of bird loves mangoes, and the bird, who introduces himself as Paulie, tells Misha his life story, a tale of passage from different human owners ending in his imprisonment in the basement.
His first owner is a little girl named Marie (Hallie Kate Eisenberg in her film debut), who was a stutterer. Paule was given when just a baby bird, as a birthday present. As she learns to speak, so does he, and he learns well, understanding the meaning of words and learning to construct complex sentences.
Marie's father does not like the bird, particularly when Marie tells her parents that the bird can talk. Marie wants Paulie to be with her everywhere, so she tries to teach him to fly, although he is afraid. When she nearly falls off the roof trying to teach Paulie to fly, her parents decide to get rid of him. Paulie gets passed from one owner to another, spending time as a window display at Bloomingdales, then as a model for a brochure (for Costa Rica), than as an assistant to a magician, Zintar, who falls upon hard times and is forced to either pawn his cape or his bird (the cape wins). Finally, Paulie ends up in a pawn shop (Buddy Hackett as pawn shop proprietor).
Paule is purchased by an aging artist, Ivy (Gena Rowlands). She teaches him manners, and even takes Paulie back to Marie's house, but they find that she and her family have moved to Los Angeles. After a great deal of persuasion, Paulie convinces Ivy to commence a journey from New Jersey to Los Angeles to find Marie. During their trip across the country, Ivy begins to lose her sight. Since she can't take him any further, Ivy proposes Paulie learns to fly. This still scares Paulie, and he refuses. Ivy finally loses her sight entirely, and shortly thereafter passes away. Paulie, deeply saddened by Ivy's passing, decides he must finally learn to fly. He takes off and flies to the Grand Canyon to watch the sunrise, one of Ivy's dying wishes.
After travelling for some time, Paulie arrives in eastern Los Angeles. He then joins a group of performing parrots owned by Ignacio (Cheech Marin). Paulie falls in love with a female parrot of the group named Lupe, but loses interest when he find that she cannot understand what she says as he does.
Paulie is then kidnapped by Benny (Jay Mohr, who also voices Paulie), a thief who engineers a police raid by making false accusations against Ignatio, and snatching Paulie amid the chaos, despite Paulie's protests. Benny teaches Paulie how to steal money from ATMs using other people's credit cards, but this doesn't generate enough income to satisfy Benny's girlfriend, who demands jewelry. In a botched jewel theft, Paulie flies down through the chimney of a house, but is trapped inside, and abandoned by Benny.
In the house, Paulie is captured and taken to a building where he is tested for his ability to read, speak and identify images. He is promised that he will be told Marie's whereabouts, but this is a ruse to get him to cooperate and he ends up with his wings clipped, caged in a basement, where Misha finds him. Angered at the research institute, Misha quits his job and helps Paulie and various other animals escape from the research institute.
Misha finds Marie's new address and takes Paulie there. Marie is now a beautiful woman, about 30 years old (Trini Alvarado). Paulie joyfully flies around for the first time in years, and lands on Marie's shoulder.
[edit] External links
- Paulie at the Internet Movie Database
- A bird's review of the movie and the confirmation of Paulie's bird species. Paulie is not a lovebird. The lovebird is smaller than a blue-crowned conure.
