“Birding comedy” is not a phrase you hear all that often. In fact, “The Big Year” may be one of a kind.

Here’s a blurb for the new film, out this week on DVD: “It’s the best birding comedy of all time!” Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean much.

“The Big Year” is about three very different men all struggling to juggle their personal lives with their love for birding … or bird watching for the uninitiated. A character corrects another when he says “bird watching” at one point, but I couldn’t figure out what the difference was. All three men are setting out to have a “big year,” which means they aim to see as many different species of birds as they can in one year to become the “greatest birder of all time.”

As two men with accents say early in the film, “Only Americans can turn birding into a competition.” Owen Wilson then proceeds to flip them his own bird. I actually laughed at that one.

Brad Harris (Jack Black) is a 36-year-old man who lives with his parents and hates his job. Stu (Steve Martin) is a rich businessman who just wants to retire, but his underlings seem lost without him. And finally there is Kenny Bostick (Owen Wilson) who holds the big year record of 732 birds and now returns to defend his title. Bostick struggles to keep his marriage alive while he constantly chooses the birds over his pregnant wife.

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Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

SUNDAY MORNING: Dog lovers everywhere united to make Fox’s Marley & Me the #1 Christmas weekend movie with an expected $51.18M in the Thursday-thru-Sunday period for a Per Theatre Average of $14,888. Pre-opening industry tracking pointed to a clear win for Bedtime Stories (Disney), but it was the lovable lab who finished on top.

As an aside, all of us who read John Grogan’s extraordinarily well-written novel should have seen this coming. The book is a joy, and anyone who has a dog, or has ever had a dog, could easily identify with the struggles and pleasures of having a 4-legged member of the family.

The success of Marley slightly mitigates a disastrous year for Fox. Its year started out well enough riding the huge success of 2007 release Alvin & the Chipmunks into January ($70M of Alvin’s gross landed in this calendar year). The January 18 release of chick-flick 27 Dresses scored for Katherine Heigl ($76.8M in the US), then Jumper was a good solid February hit, topping $80M, followed by the wildly successful Horton Hears a Who ($154.5M domestic). Little did Fox know that when the Ashton Kutcher-Cameron Diaz comedy What Happens in Vegas played solidly to the tune of $80.2M domestic starting in May, it would be its last legit hit until Christmas’ Marley & Me. This is a huge, redemptive win for Fox, and its sentimental tear-jerker of a dog movie could near $100M domestic by Sunday.

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