It's a bird, it's a plane, it's an over-the-hill actor who's losing his mind

Rating: 7/10 (17 April 2015)

"Birdman" is the tale of a has-been superhero actor trying to mount a comeback while preserving his own sanity and failing miserably at both. It's probably best known for winning the 2015 Best Picture Oscar and featuring Michael Keaton running through Times Square in his undies. While it is an excellent movie, however, it has some faults that I just couldn't ignore.
The casting of Michael Keaton as an actor trying to escape typecasting and Edward Norton as an argumentative prima donna method actor is genius and they give great performances to boot. The normally slapstick Zach Galifanakis is nearly unrecognizable and it took me half the movie to figure out it was him. Emma Stone and Naomi Watts give terrific performances though it is hard for them to outshine the main stars.
The plot is simple yet full of possibilities. Keaton plays Riggan Thompson, a has-been attempting to put on a Broadway play to energize his career and hopefully make people forget his most famous role, that of a comic book superhero called "Birdman." However, Murphy's Law seems to be working against him in every way possible. A cast member gets injured and has to be replaced last minute by a demanding jerk named Mike Shiner(masterfully played by Norton). Shiner makes things difficult by upstaging Thompson in interviews, sabotaging performances and harping on Thompson's attention to detail. Thompson then nearly screws himself over by getting locked outside of his own theater in his underwear just before his big scene. Thompson struggles to keep his play together in the face of mishaps, vengeful theater critics, and the erosion of his own sanity.
There are many great scenes to be found here. Thompson's repeated failures to put on his play are both funny and sad due to Keaton's honest performance as both Thompson and Birdman, his imaginary tormentor. You can really feel his shame, his defeat and his slow descent into madness even as those around him try to reassure him that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Norton has many great moments such as wrestling Keaton in a speedo, hitting on an actress while naked in his dressing room, and then attempting to rape said actress backstage before a bedroom scene because he wants the audience to believe they were really doing it. She manages to fight him off but he shows the audience a visible erection. Thompson verbally sparring with a stuffy New York theater critic is another major highlight of the film because both make valid points while defending their own points of view.
The film itself is shot in a way that's quite fascinating to watch. The camera follows the character-in-focus everywhere, through cramped stairwells and hallways onto rooftops and through crowded city streets until it's time to shift to another character where it continues to follow them all around. The movie looks like one long unending take with occasional breaks to let characters sleep. The shots don't even cut away for Thompson's increasingly absurd daydreaming sequences, one of which involves Godzilla-like monstrosities demolishing the city. It's quite surprising to know that this film didn't win an editing Oscar because it truly looks seamless. There is one awkward moment where the camera is focused on an empty hallway for about fifteen seconds, which considering that the camera is always following somebody, is rather jarring.
That brings us to the movie's shortcomings. While it is a small gripe, there are lots of wonderful in-jokes peppered through the movie about specific contemporary respected actors cashing in on superhero movies and Hollywood's willingness to milk the franchises for all they're worth. Sure, the references are funny now, but they will probably date the movie.
The most serious strike against the film is its pacing issues. As I watched it, I thought it was about to end with the first flying sequence but I found there was still another half-hour left. Thompson was so far gone by that point and we last see him on a ledge so it seemed logical that the flying was his dying dream before hitting the pavement. It seemed like a wasted opportunity considering that the actual ending was somewhat similar and made less sense. It started to drag so much that I stopped caring about what was happening in that last thirty minutes. There was also a lesbian makeout scene introduced which went nowhere and had no foreshadowing.
I really didn't care for the spastic drum pounding throughout the movie. I don't know what they were going for but it just made the movie seem horribly pretentious. They occasionally worked the drumming in with a real-life street drummer and marching bands beating drums in the street which was cool but the syncing with the bizarre credit sequences was just silly.
Also, I don't get what was up with the subtitle, "The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance." It's only said once at the very end and doesn't seem to apply much to the movie as a whole. It seemed like something they tacked on because they didn't feel the movie was artsy enough.
It really is a shame that these flaws bogged the movie down because other than that, it's well-made, highly entertaining to a certain point, and has a lot of interesting ideas and scenes. If it weren't for these flaws, I would've given it a higher score. That doesn't mean it's not worth checking out though.