One star and that's for Keaton's effort

Rating: 1/10 (10 December 2014)

There's always a slot for a movie every calendar year for the one film that everyone praises but hardly anyone understands, likes, or comes close to fathom why it receives such accolades. "Birdman" and its entire cast and crew (with the exception of Keaton) have taken that spot, dislodging "Boyhood" out of this position. Still, "Boyhood" had Ethan and Arquette, which made it passable.
"Birdman" feels like an inside joke, and it never escapes that categorization for it constantly repeats its wink wink attitude. It keeps calling attention to how much it knows about the world of theater and its actors, so full of insecurity, mental trauma, every possible mental instability you can think of, and most importantly inmeasurable amounts of egocentric devotion. It is always, not so subtly calling attention to how hard it is to be a real actor, how much drama there is, and how special those beings are.
Keaton plays an actor who wants to be taken seriously by giving Broadway a try, and it's not an easy task because for starters, he doesn't trust himself as being anything else but a long-gone matinée idol, and this is in spite of his fans who keep jumping out of nowhere. You'd think that'd keep his ego satisfied, but where would the film go if there was no drama? So the four writers behind this mess keep piling up the tragedies... an addicted daughter, a possibly cheating girlfriend, who might or not be pregnant, a loving ex-wife who can't stay away in spite of the "attack", a manager who seems to offer too much support, a hateful critic, the local bar... I kept wondering when the Thelma Ritter character was going to make an appearance to liven things a little, but we did have an Eve Carrington type in there, somehow modified to make it look fresh and more psychotic. I never thought I would dislike anything Norton did, but this film managed to make him and Watts totally useless, and these two have been formidable, especially Watts in her last films. She's wonderful in "St. Vincent", showing she's capable of delivering great performances, and to make us feel even worse, there's that lesbian kiss, making me yearn for her sublime turn in "Mulholland Drive".
So much is wrong with this film that it would take pages to express the disatisfaction. The dialogue is borderline unbearable, making us wish the fictitious "Birdman" strike them dead. These people can't stop talking about their "problems" because if they didn't have them, their lives would be even more boring. It's just plain unbelievable that all actors carry that psychological weight. Are there any happy Broadway types? Even Watts is not happy she finally made it?
Then there is the gratuitous nudity. There was something strange about that preview, and it did hint at both something special and something really wrong with the film. To be fair, had the film concentrated on the Keaton character, it would have soared. This happens way too late in the movie, and it's an incredible flight of the imagination, but the road there is just mined with too many pretentious and incompetent attempts at being "original". I haven't heard that many yawns and sighs in one theater as I did this time. It's just an utter mess.
The subject of the theater and acting has been explored and shown with fantastic results, classic performances, and most importantly with superb examples of insight and drama. "All About Eve" and "All That Jazz might be the best of those films, and I can recall O'Toole, Finney, Weist, and a few other very talented actors and directors showing that type of life can indeed be full of drama, wit, insecurity and human comedy. "Birdman" only shows everything that can go wrong with trying to pretend that you do know what is going on.
Finally, don't get me going on those long hand-held shots... There was once a film about some criminals that was praised to heaven for something similar, and that certainly didn't make it a better film. In this case, it's supposed to be intimate; instead it's annoying, intrusive, disturbing and just another example that along with the interminable number of close ups, it only makes us feel extremely nauseous.