Bigger Than the Sky (2005)

Bigger Than the Sky: Directed by Al Corley. With Marcus Thomas, John Corbett, Amy Smart, Sean Astin. A man with a boring personality, job, life, and dumped by girlfriend, auditions at the community theater and gets the lead role as Cyrano despite no acting experience. It changes his life forever.

“Okay, I was surprised, and surprised. This movie was a bargain basement DVD for me purchased together with a number of formerly unknown titles by moi.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI had zero expectations having only purchased the title based on curiosity of John Corbettu0026#39;s career having seen Joel Zwicku0026#39;s u0026#39;Big, Fatu0026#39; and u0026#39;Elvis Hasu0026#39; movies – both of which had an Indies feel, and John Corbett was pretty much John Corbett. He seems to be good at anything and brings confidence to his role and a certain charm that his audience enjoys. The first surprise for me was that the actors and the characters fit the story seamlessly, the plot actually worked, the editing must have worked because I felt a constant flow to the plot from beginning to end. That was nice.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe second surprise was the storyline itself. I donu0026#39;t think this is a spoiler, Iu0026#39;m not going to reveal the plot here but rather the idea, which I liked very much: This story is driven by the word panache (you can look it up) and panache is symbolized and referred to at various points in the storyline – but the story is Cyrano. The cut-and-dried casual first-timer (Marcus) is actually Cyrano metaphorically. The characters played by John and Amy actually are Christian and Roxanne. But, we donu0026#39;t know this as we are introduced to seasoned actors in community theater. We see instead the acting process in brief play-by-plays from introduction to opening night. We are given a hint by the u0026#39;directoru0026#39; of this u0026#39;stage productionu0026#39; that the nose itself is only a metaphor for the social limits of the man, and finally, we see the courage of the man himself as he leaves his misunderstood cocoon to be a Peter Rucker that he really was inside, just as we are treated to Cyranou0026#39;s death scene and implied metamorphosis. And, I think that was brilliant.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFull points for the cast, full points for the director, and full points for who ever developed that story!”