2017. What a year, eh? If you thought it couldn’t get any worse, then you haven’t seen the reviews for Netflix Original Movie, Bright. The Emoji Movie may have staked a claim to be utterly unwatchable, but at least they didn’t spend $90m on something so bad it’s been almost universally panned. The reviews have not been kind (except for one brave soul) – let’s take a look, shall we?
Just how bad is Bright? - IndieWire (F)
“There’s boring, there’s bad, and then there’s Bright, a movie so profoundly awful that Republicans will probably try to pass it into law over Christmas break. From the director of Suicide Squad and the writer of Victor Frankenstein comes a fresh slice of hell that somehow represents new lows for them both — a dull and painfully derivative ordeal that often feels like it was made just to put those earlier misfires into perspective.”
Bright's buddy cop dynamic - The Telegraph (2/5)
“One of the cops is Will Smith, as a regular, cynical officer called Ward, and the other is his partner Jakoby, the do-gooder played by Edgerton, in mottled make-up that makes him look like a kissing cousin to some minor Star Trek species. Edgerton, as he regularly has been, is the best thing about the movie. He finds a way to navigate the cops’ quippy-quippy relationship while forging a distinct personality… Smith is fine. Thoroughly conventional as it might be, their dynamic is some kind of life-raft for an audience to cling on to. It’s just a life-raft struggling to stay intact in a gloopy and incessant flow of molten lava.”
Bright is... good? - Variety (4.5/5)
“Bright is the best Netflix original movie to date, and it absolutely deserves to be seen on the big screen, though don’t let that stop you from watching it home, as End of Watch director David Ayer’s welcome return to the cop-movie genre — following a disastrous wrong turn into Suicide Squad territory, of which we will say no more — fills an intense, grown-up movie niche that Hollywood once did so well, but has since replaced with formula-driven product.”
Bright's failed world-building - Entertainment Weekly (D+)
“In theory, a modern-day fantasy setting sounds like a perfect franchise starter, and with better execution, it could’ve made for a launchpad to all sorts of sequels and spinoffs. In reality, Ayer and Landis’s world is so dull and ill-conceived that few will want to spend any additional time there. It’s a world of magic that lacks any of its own”
Bright's messy mash-up - Total Film (2/5)
“Neither a satisfying treaty on diversity and 'race' wars, nor a fulfilling fantasy, it derails at the end of the first act with a confusing moment of anti-heroism, and never recovers. Be(a)st in show is Edgerton as the sweet-natured orc just trying to do his job, but he's the one bright spot in an otherwise confused genre mash that fails to deliver on the promise of its big ideas.”
Image: Netflix
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