What a load of tosh

Rating: 1/10 (9 January 2015)

Less than a week into the new year and we have a prime candidate already for the worst film of the year. Inarritu has shown that his view of creating a production for the theatre is so hackneyed it is a rival for Mel Brook's "The Producers" but without the laughs. Here, as the director, he is self-indulgently showing off his abilities to the audience - watch me use time-lapse photography instead of cutting to move the time of the action along; see how I have learnt how to move my actors around the set from my regular viewing of the"live" episodes of "Coronation Street"; aren't I clever in the way I track my camera from the outside of a building into the inside via a balustrade and a window; what about the way I position my camera within the confines of a dressing room so that you don't see it recording what's going on inside - all this trickery highlights his inability tell a story in a way that involves the audience. I was looking forward to seeing Michael Keaton show his acting chops in a role that he was born to play - washed-up TV star trying to make a comeback into celebrity and the acting game in general but flirting with madness whilst trying to do so but his "Birdman" alter-ego kept getting in the way at the behest of his director. But his was not the only talent that was wasted. The rest of the cast were similarly handed caricature-driven roles that they could do nothing new with - Edward Norton playing a "prima donna"actor brought in to bolster the box- office appeal of the play and who has his own ideas on how to play his role; Naomi Watts playing an actress given her first role in a Broadway show and being crippled by nervousness to the extent that she is sick prior to the opening night performance; Andrea Riseborough as Keaton's new girlfriend possibly impregnated by him and not sure how to deal with this; Zach Galifianikis as the producer only worried about the money and the show's success; Emma Stone as Keaton's ex-drug addict daughter trying to keep Keaton and herself stable as Keaton goes off the rails - is there anything new here? I don't think so. The only reason I give this film one star is because of a short scene between Keaton as actor and Lindsay Duncan as Broadway theatre critic were she attacks him as a Hollywood invader of the "High Art" of Broadway and he attacks her for just being a labeller of theatrical types. This scene happens towards the end of the film and sadly comes too late to save it from its crassness. What a film it would have been if this had been the theme running through it. "The Sweet Smell of Success", "Topsy-Turvy" and even "The Producers" need not worry about their reputations for examining the theatre and the folk that work within and outside it. They are classics. This film is decidedly not.