Not half as good as it wants to be

Rating: 1/10 (12 January 2015)

After reading all the great reviews, I was really looking forward to seeing Birdman but I was sorely disappointed. The story doesn't develop into anything particularly interesting and I didn't care what happened to any of the vacuous, one-dimensional characters. The lesbian scene is thrown in there for no reason at all, Norton's character doesn't develop enough and we never really find out the background of the relationship between Keaton's character and his wife and daughter (I can't remember any of the character's names, that's how much I cared about them).
As far as I can see, the reason for the rave reviews must be down to the unique filming technique with all the long takes which is different to anything I've seen before, (even though there is more than one occasion where somebody fluffs their lines but it was left in the final cut anyway), and the acting which, to be fair, is very good. All in all, Birdman left me feeling empty. It's self- indulgent, pretentious nonsense that doesn't deserve the 5 star reviews it's been getting. Not by a long shot.