Flawed and Pretentious but ultimately an interesting movie

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2015)

Spoilers in this film.
Birdman is an utterly strange film. A movie that decidedly lacks a strong form and replaces it with an ever flowing dream like perception of reality. Simply based on the acting and editing, Birdman is a triumph of a film. The performances are strong and nuanced, but ultimately it is the film's ironic self importance that causes it to crumble at times.
The movie ultimately would have been leagues better if it filtered its narrative down to just be about Riggan. Extending to all the other side stories IMO detracts from the film in a big way.
The opening starts off throwing 100 subplots at you, to the point where it almost feels like satire ala the film Airplane. When you have "everything going wrong" in the play then some unintroduced female character jumps in and says "I'm pregnant, and it's your baby!" The film feels very very melodramatic in a weekday soap opera kind of way. Or when a character says "I would take out your eye and put them in my head so I could see the way you see at your age" I can't help but roll my eyes.
Like previous efforts by this director it feels overly preachy, melodramatic, and at time eye-rollingly sentimental. Yet the core character is achieved so very well. The message is something interesting even if it bashes you over the head with it so hard, you can't tell if it is really being serious about that point any more. You can only tell every character and every element of the story that "it doesn't matter" so many times before you can't help but ask "then why am I watching this?"
This movie reminds me of some annoying tropes of fiction, like writing a book about how hard it is to write a book, or making a movie about making a movie. It makes all of these jobs and people to be so overly self-important that they just come across as irrelevant and difficult to connect with.
Riggan and his ex-wife were the only really sympathetic characters I found in the film. Edward Norton's character was detestably self-important as was Niomi Watts and Emma Stone.
Having said all of this, the movie is good and original. It just feels like it didn't land on the tone it should have to have been a really great film. It is interesting, funny at times, and something that you will think about for a while. I know what I was left thinking about was what the filmmaker's true intention was.
Over all though this movie feels really really overrated, don't go into it thinking it is a masterpiece like I was lead to believe, because it is a very flawed movie from a story and writing standpoint. The acting, directing, and editing help to elevate the average and at times outright corny writing.