Bright Review: 3 Ups & 6 Downs

Downs...

6. Max Landis' Script Is A Hot Mess

Bright Will Smith Joel Edgerton
Netflix

Bright was written by Max Landis, so it's little surprise that the end product is a muddled mess of ideas, as was especially apparent in his screenplays for American Ultra and Victor Frankenstein back in 2015.

Landis' script for this movie is ambitious to a point, but it also fails to reconcile its various different genres - gritty cop thriller, fantasy adventure film and buddy cop comedy - into a coherent whole, resulting in a sloppy mash-up that just feels totally all over the place.

From the tone, which fleets from goofy to grimdark at the turn of a heel, to the total lack of character development for some of the film's more pivotal characters and its checklist of concepts cribbed from other, better movies, it feels like a film trying to please about half a dozen different types of audiences, but ultimately not fully satisfying any of them.

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.