10 Recent Movies That Tried Way Too Hard To Be Clever

10. Bright

Netflix's magical crime drama Bright, had already exited the gate with preemptive bias given that the film was written by the grotesque and problematic Max Landis; but if you were able to separate art from artist, and tried to enjoy the supernatural romp, you'd still be disappointed.

The premise of Bright is a superb idea; a buddy-cop movie set in a world filled with fantasy creatures and mythology entwined. Where the movie fails is the misinformed arguments made about racial tensions between humans and orcs (substituting a real world racial upset).

This idea is double-fisted by the friend-foe relationship between Will Smith and Joel Edgerton's characters; the former sharing dislike for orcs, while the latter is part of an affirmative action initiated to invite orcs into the LA Police.

Maybe Bright would have been better if it were a TV series? At least that way the relationship and tensions between humans and elves, pixies or orcs could have been thought out more. But instead, the film tries earnestly to comment about police violence, gang culture and internal police affairs with childish and lazy arguments.

Either make a serious film about corruption and police brutality, or a film about magical nonsense. But never both.