This movie sucks.

Rating: 2/10 (3 February 2018)

This movie is a bad movie, plain and simple. It is one of the worst movies I have ever sat through. It's two hours of nothing. Just nothing. It pretends to be a low budget art film, even though in reality it's just a big budget money- grabber trash film from the same guy who brought you The Revenant, a two hour snuff film. This movie is for people who want to seem intellectual without actually being intellectual. It is not smart, or funny, or revolutionary. Do not watch it.
First things first- this movie has Michael Keaton. That's sad. I like Michael Keaton. He's a good actor. The original Batman is one of my all time favorite movies. So for him to be cast in a sucker like this- well, that's just beyond my comprehension. Even more than that, it makes a mockery of him- portrays him as a washed up actor. This film is garbage on so many levels.
The film opens, just like The Revenant, with some incoherent hushed whispering, then we see Michael Keaton in a room, FLOATING- and we never see him do this again, for some reason- and it's never explained or anything. Then, we have one cut, and we enter literal movie Hell. From this point on, the film becomes so boring and dull that I wanted to switch it off. But I sat through it, like a prisoner chained to a couch- and I wish I hadn't.
My main problem with the movie is that it takes place in some insane alternate universe where, instead of Batman, there's BIRDMAN- who's totally different and a lot stupider, because he wouldn't be one bit scary to criminals, which is the whole point of Batman- but the world is exactly the same in every other way. Michael Keaton is the guy who played Birdman, and he's a washed up bum who's depressed and hates his life and everything. I'd love it if he was just in a new Batman movie or something. Or, maybe, he could be in a BIRDMAN movie- like, an actual BIRDMAN movie- which would be cool- instead of this boring movie about how they're MAKING these fictional Birdman movies. Why make a movie ABOUT MAKING A MOVIE? That's insane. There can be a movie about a washed up actor- but don't tantalize us throughout with clips and shots from a movie that would actually be BETTER. I'd watch Birdman. It would be cool. I don't want to watch a fake documentary about making Birdman.
And that alternate title has five long words- which aren't related to the plot in ANY WAY- but they're added on there just to give the whole trash heap a kind of pseudo-intellectual vibe. What a faker.
Anyway, after Michael Keaton floats around for a while in his room, the camera cuts- ONE OF ONLY TWO CUTS IN THE WHOLE MOVIE- and we start following his back around, through hallways and up stairs- like some kind of labyrinth- and his head spins around, and the cameraman wobbles like he's on drugs or something- just a very unpleasant experience. It's disorienting- There should be cuts in movies. This movie was boring in part because it's just like following somebody around for a whole day and observing what they do- and that's not exciting- I'm just glad they condensed it into two hours, instead of actually recording people walking around and doing mundane things for twenty four hours. I don't need to see Michael Keaton put on his shirt, brush his teeth, watch TV for a few hours- all in real time. That would be unbearable.
Birdman is not a movie- it's more a "slice of life" type thing. But the pie which the slice comes from tastes icky. The characters are unlikable- they're all big Broadway snobs- which I'm sure the pseudo-intellectual audience can relate to- I can just IMAGINE them eating their fancy crackers- And I couldn't tell any of the characters apart, except some were women and some were men. The camera just follows Michael Keaton around, and people talk to him about acting and stuff- and I don't know who any of those people are or what the heck they're doing. The one good part about the movie is that the singular long cut speeds up during the night, when one of the characters falls asleep- it doesn't stay there for twelve hours while she sleeps- that's nice.
Michael Keaton, in one scene (This movie HAS no scenes, it IS one big long scene) just walks around a table, that's going to be used in some play, and talks with the people about how the table should be used, and stuff. then the camera keeps following him around and up places and down places and into streets and along streets, talking with people. This movie is so boring that it has virtually no plot- just a man walking around and talking with people. I'm just glad it has some dialogue, or I could just stare at a wall for two hours and see exactly the same thing.
Now, there is one good part- and this is the only good part- there is one part where Michael Keaton is walking along, like always, and he meets his alter personality, Birdman, and Birdman does cool stuff like throwing cars off roofs and there are aliens and sidewalks blow up and Birdman zooms around and does cool stuff, and people fall out of windows and stuff, but then it turns out that the whole thing was just in Michael Keaton's imagination- he was just going nuts, apparently- then he keeps walking around and talking to people, like always, and the movie becomes boring again. That one event, out of the whole movie, made me clap my hands once. It also allowed me to come out of my coma.
The ending is the worst part of it all. Michael Keaton, all depressed from having such a boring, meaningless existence, goes crazy and decides that he's a washed up actor, and he jumps out the window, because he's crazy, and he thinks he can fly or something, and he breaks every fricking bone in his body and he's assigned to the emergency room for all eternity, and his life still sucks, because he can't fly like he thought he could.
Now here's the dumbest part- at the very end, he's just lying there, and I feel genuine pity for the guy who used to be cool as Batman- not because he's all bruised up, but because he's playing a character in a stupid movie like this when he could be zooming out of the Batcave- so he's lying there, right, and THEN, because he's so stupid, he decides to jump out the window again, the freaking lunatic, and he goes up on the window, and jumps out- and then there's ONE MORE CUT (The only cut besides the one in the beginning) and his niece or daughter or somebody related to him comes in (she's only there for family interest) and we don't see if he died or if he actually flew- she just looks out the window, and then up at the sky, and smiles, and happy little music plays, and OOP! There's the credits- and we never know what the Hell happened. Did he fly, or is he dead? Is the lady smiling because he's dead? That's pretty morbid. Really, though, I bet they didn't show him flying because that would have been too expensive- and they had already shelled out a billion dollars to hire a cameraman who was willing to walk around Michael Keaton for two hours and record everything he did.
This is a sad movie. It's not funny, or dramatic, or philosophic in any way, or inventive, or action packed, and it ruins Michael Keaton for me, to think he'd sign up to be in some shlock like this. Very sad. This movie was so dull- so lifeless, so void of human emotion- that it left me wondering just what humanity had come to in the end. Do people these days go and see movies just because they THINK they're good, even if they're not good? This movie is not good. It's garbage. Thank you.