A potentially great satire that suffered from all what it mocked!

Rating: 6/10 (28 February 2015)

But being a satire doesn't absolve this could-have-been-awesome movie from the sin that ruined its greatness: Who but an intellectual elite in his detached ivory tower would ever empathize with the suicidal angst of the unbelievable central character? I mean who in the real world of hardworking masses who struggle to pay their monthly bills and make ends meet would identify with the "suffering" of a person who could have created "a billion dollars in profits worldwide guaranteed " by playing the role of a marvel-type superhero, and who decided to ditch that chance and go both bankrupt and crazy over creating a "serious" play in which he plays a "serious" role!
Who in the world would accept such character as real? Who could manage to suspend disbelieve enough to be touched and changed by the movie's powerful message? A message that was supposed to be punch, a slap on the face, but was doomed to lose all of its power because the central character wasn't well designed, and ended up far from being even minimally believable. The relation between the central character and his daughter did not help much in enhancing believability. On the contrary! It only added another unbelievable character to the cast: the "modern" "shallow" daughter who was there just to deliver the most unbelievable, unauthentic and terribly artificial dialog that was supposed to sound as today's "modern, shallow" youth. The effort to criticize modern superficiality and shallowness was ironically very shallow and superficial itself. Being a satire is never an excuse for two-dimensional characters, silly dialog and unbelievable plots.
It is amazing how the movie suffered from everything it tried to criticize. It is incredible how childish the script writer's thought must've been as they made references to Robert Downy Junior and Iron man assuming that they were doing something Genius, or how the casting assumed that Michael Keaton's previous role in Batman might've added some sort of depth or credit to the movie! One shivers from the simplicity of the minds of those who assume that coining expressions like "super reality show" to describe the very predictable suicide scene at the end of the movie is some how a "deep" and "cultured" way to send-up reality shows. Oh, come on people. How can you be so lame??
So , yeah, it's just another great idea, badly executed and flattened by a mushy plot, weak characterization, adolescent imagination, and annoying (yes annoying) music .. but saved, one must admit, with GREAT acting from everyone in the cast. And also great directing and editing.
The biggest gain from this movie is the unmasking of critics. Those who praised the movie for the acting and directing can still be trusted, but those who gushed praise for the plot and its "sophistication", and "metaphors" and "depth of characters" are simply full of you know what.
To sum up: Birdman is one of those movies which you hate so much as it is because you admire so much what it could have been. You feel sorry and frustrated because it had that awesome potential to be a timeless classic, and a reality-changing message the way true art is supposed to be, but it ended up as a joke instead, one which mocked nothing other than itself.
What a loss.