Paulie
| Paulie | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | John Roberts |
| Produced by |
Mark Gordon Gary Levinsohn Allyson Lyon Segan |
| Written by | Laurie Craig |
| Starring | |
| Music by | John Debney |
| Cinematography | Tony Pierce-Roberts |
| Edited by | Bruce Cannon |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | DreamWorks Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $23 million |
| Box office | $26.9 million |
Paulie is a 1998 American adventure fantasy comedy film about a disobedient bird named Paulie, starring Tony Shalhoub, Gena Rowlands, Hallie Eisenberg, and Jay Mohr. Mohr performs both the voice of Paulie and the on-screen supporting role of Benny, a character who has a lot of dialogue with Paulie.
The film is a picaresque tale about an intelligent talking blue-crowned conure named Paulie, and his long quest to return to his owner.
Misha Belenkoff (Tony Shalhoub), a Russian immigrant and former teacher of literature, lives in America and works as a janitor at an animal testing lab. At the lab, Belenkoff encounters Paulie and is shocked to see Paulie speaking fluent English. Subsequently, Paulie does not speak a word when Belenkoff brings others to witness the talking bird.
Belenkoff woos Paulie to tell his story by offering him pieces of mango. Paulie tells Belenkoff about his original owner, a little girl named Marie (Hallie Eisenberg) who suffers from a severe stutter. The story transitions to a flashback scene in which Paulie is a baby bird. As Marie learns to speak properly, so does Paulie, beginning with understanding the meaning of words and progressing to the construction of complex sentences. Marie's father Warren (Matt Craven), a soldier, returns home from Vietnam and decides that Paulie is not helping Marie. The father's resentment of the close bond between Paulie and Marie, and their shared progress in speech development is evident.
It becomes obvious that he wants Marie to forget Paulie, when the father brings her a cat. The cat and Paulie do not get along. Once again, Warren blames Paulie for Marie's speaking problems and believes she has imagined Paulie's ability to speak. Eventually after a dramatic event in which Marie falls off the roof in an attempt to teach Paulie to fly, Warren convinces Marie's mother Lila (Laura Harrington) to send him away.
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Wikipedia