Pretentious, amateurish scenery chewing...

Rating: 1/10 (19 March 2015)

In high school, we staged plays like the one Michael Keaton's character puts on in BIRDMAN; they were just as bad, just as forgettable. Prior to his turn as BATMAN, Keaton starred in two very memorable films, THE DREAM TEAM and CLEAN AND SOBER. Both movies showed that his casting as The Dark Knight was inspired and not the evidence of Tim Burton's madness that many had proclaimed. Keaton's choices following BATMAN weren't as shrewd: though he had his pick of parts, he seemed to be trying to distance himself from The Caped Crusader. In so doing, he boxed himself into corners. In BIRDMAN, which is about as pretentious a movie as anything I've ever seen, his character does as Keaton did, with predictable results. Predictable? Clichéd to the Nth Degree is more to the point- and the hand-held camera trailing along behind him adds absolutely NOTHING to the film; it simply becomes TEDIOUS after an all-too-brief time. Like the aforementioned high school plays, BIRDMAN is Amateurish to an embarrassing degree- and whoever "wrote" this one needs to learn HOW to write; that's the worst aspect of all. BIRDMAN is, to put it simply, for the Birds.