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“Big Miracle” is an inspirational true-life drama set in 1988 that tells the story of Operation Breakthrough, the international effort to rescue three gray whales that got trapped under the Arctic ice near Point Barrow, Alaska.

The likable John Krasinski plays a TV reporter who first spots the whales poking their noses up through a hole in the ice to in order to breathe. Spearheading the rescue mission is Rachel Kramer, a Greenpeace activist played by Drew Barrymore. I have to give credit to Barrymore for playing Rachel not as a cuddly heroine, but as exactly the sort of woman who has compassion for whales because she’s got so many neurotic issues with the human animal.

The thing that separates “Big Miracle” from, say, “Free Willy” is that on the surface, at least, the film has an amiable cynicism. Its hook, which becomes a running joke, is that everyone who participates in the rescue mission is in it for his or her own selfish reasons. The Greenpeace activist has her eco-princess self-righteousness. The greedy oil man, played by Ted Danson, who agrees to lend his hover barge to break up the ice, is just looking for some environmental-friendly PR. Yet by the time we hear President Reagan enlist the Soviets for help by picking up the phone to say “Hello Gorby, it’s Ronnie,” the movie has become a we-are-the-world lovefest.

“Big Miracle” wants to be a nostalgic tale of how, back in the good old ‘80s, everyone could come together when it mattered. At times, the movie is like a cheesy rabble-rouser made in the ‘80s.

“Big Miracle” is harmless enough, but what sticks in my craw about it, just a little bit, is its aura of fake activism. The movie doesn’t seem to realize that it’s exactly when the news media started to spend more time covering subjects like whales that it began to turn into news not for activists but for couch potatoes.