Amsterdam Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs
4. It's A Tonal Trainwreck
Amsterdam is a prime example of a movie that never strikes a consistent tone, pinballing wildly from daft comedy to dead serious social commentary on an utter whim.
Though it certainly isn't impossible to reconcile the light and dark elements of the narrative with a sharp enough script, in this case O. Russell has abjectly failed at that, delivering a film that feels offputtingly schizophrenic from scene to scene.
Given its rather jumpy, jarring editing at times - something we'll get to shortly - one suspects Russell did a lot of work to try and iron out the tone in post-production, but the end result is still pretty unwieldly - especially for a large-budget adult drama aimed at mainstream audiences.
If somebody watched this movie and their reaction was simply, "What the hell did I just see?," it would be tough to blame them.