The whole is less than the sum of its parts

Rating: 5/10 (8 March 2015)

'Birdman' is a film practically bursting at the seams with audacious style, sly wit and wonderful performances. So it's curious that it all adds up to a film that I can't even say that I liked. I suppose the blame lay with director Alejandro González Iñárritu and his refusal to budge even an inch. He had a vision, and that vision's first victim was convention.
'Birdman' is a frustrating and exhausting film whose excesses ultimately overwhelm its many virtues and turn a potentially brilliant film into nothing more than an edifice to artistic ego leaving us to ponder wistfully at what might have been.