[Review] Bright

Netflix's "first Blockbuster" is more like a C-film that you'd find at the bottom of a DVD bargain bin in a sketchy Pawn Shop that somehow has managed to stay in business all these years. It's called Bright -- a title so vague and uninspired that it sounds like a script placeholder that no one ever bothered the change. The film haphazardly takes the concept of a buddy cop movie and smashes it together with magic and fantasy elements, and the results are appalling.

This monstrosity is set in what appears to be a modern-day L.A. -- except humans live alongside fairies, orcs, and elves (it's never really explained how this came to be). Will Smith plays a cop who reluctantly teams up with a gravelly-faced Orc (played by Joel Edgerton). The Orc is frowned upon and bullied by the humans at the precinct -- not sure why, because he looks like he could kick everyone else's ass, and possibly eat them. Anyway, the plot sees the mismatched cops cruise around and get caught up in a weird web of characters and mystical forces that even Harry Potter would scoff at. They also beef with a villainous, suit-wearing elf that resembles Elrond on acid.

When the movie begins with Will Smith talking to his wife (who ends up disappearing for the entire time) about how a fairy threw a handful of its own shit into his cousin's eye when they were little, you know exactly what you're in for. This is one of the ugliest, most unfunny, obnoxious, ridiculous things you could possibly see. Bright is a movie that looks like it smells bad. It's the pink eye of hybrid flicks. Director David Ayer and screenwriter Max Landis have somehow managed to create something even pukier and less engaging than Suicide Squad. This is type of thing what would happen if Dungeons & Dragons poofed out a spellbound fart onto Training Day. And of course, I wasn't expecting the dialogue to be good here, but the dialogue is remarkably horrendous here. Although I did get a kick out of Will Smith forcibly shouting "We have a MAGIC WAND!" with a straight face. Unfortunately, the film's stabs at social commentary sound like your Facebook friend who just recently found out that people are treated unequally in this country.

But Bright's biggest crime is that it's boring. Once all the initial amusement and head-shaking stuff wears off, this just turns into a messy, tone-deaf slogfest with erratic logic. I'll be honest with you, I didn't even know what was going on the entire second half of the two-hour duration. I have to at least admire the film for trying something... different, but I'm going to go ahead and say that this one did not work. From now on whenever a new buddy cop movie comes out, my guess is that probably we'll probably be saying "Hey, at least it's better than Bright."

( 3.5/10 )

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