A couple months ago, I saw an advertisement from Netflix for Bright, a cop directed by David Ayer starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton. I ignored the dumpster fire that was War Machine, Netflix’s last big star experiment with Brad Pitt, and thought maybe Ayer could pull through. Ayer made End of Watch, a really well made buddy cop film that keeps you on the edge of your seat and rips your heart out at the end. He also wrote the screenplay for The Fast and the Furious so he forever holds a place in my heart. You know you love those movies too.
The problem with a Netflix movie is that if it doesn’t grab you, you can click out and move on with your life. You could switch to The Office, which you already know you love and won’t disappoint. That’s what happened with War Machine.
I love Brad Pitt. If I’m ever truly shit out of luck, I have this plan to be a pro wrestler based on his “Mickey One Punch” character from Snatch that dances around the ring avoiding contact until a window opens then POW, right in the kisser, Heavyweight Champ. Anyway, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone into a barbershop with a picture of Brad Pitt’s hair on my phone, but holy shit did War Machine suck. I had to turn it off and resume my hangover in silence.
I’ve never walked out of a movie theater before in my life, but with Netflix movies, I now had a 1:1, 100% quit rate.
Three days ago, I started Bright, and within thirty minutes I was 2/2.
I sat down with my brother and mom, turned it on, and felt my face flush in embarrassment. I felt shame for suggesting this movie in front of two people that saw me helplessly piss my bed as a kid. The same people knocked on the bathroom door to tell me to end my thirty minute showers in middle school.
I didn’t want to ruin Christmas, and by the looks on my mom and brother’s faces, I was close, so I switched to the Bitcoin documentary, which could have been in German or Chinese and I would have understood the same amount.
Well. I flew home and finished it alone, and it sucked even more than I could have dreamed.
I don’t understand how these big time actors, actresses, and directors, can finish a shootout scene where Will Smith tells a blue-skinned Joel Edgerton Orc in a cop uniform about their predicament “They’re (the cops) gonna take the wand, and thats when the stupid shit’s gonna start, and by the way, thats only if the gangsta’s don’t get it first, that’s when the triple stupid shit’s gonna start” and all sign off on it! Nobody watching that afterwards says “Hey can we reshoot that with literally any other quote?” I guess not. Maybe I’m the crazy one.
There are so many unnecessary plugs all throughout the movie. There’s a 5 minute scene involving Will Smith, a cop, killing an innocent 8 inch tall fairy, with the fluffy end of broom, in front of a bunch of spectators, that was probably trying to imply some sort of political parallel but didn’t really take a side so it was just awkward. Fairy’s never come back in the movie until the final scene where one shoots across screen like the rat at the end of The Departed, so what’s the point of even introducing them.
It’s really hard to assimilate hardcore gang-riddled futuristic Los Angeles with people ripping off words like “Elves, Fairys, and Wizards”, and this is coming from a guy (me) who reads or listens to the Harry Potter series bi-annually.
We know all the character in the film have been mixed together for a long time. Will Smith’s partner, the Orc-Cop named Jakoby, makes a joke in a heated moment when Will Smith says, “I don’t speak Elvish…” to which he ever so wittingly replies, “Well, I took two years in high school.”
So you’re telling me that after all these years, nobody has any alternative names for Orc, Elf, Wizard, Dark Lord, Fairy, etc.? There are gangs of Orc’s in FULL FUBU OUTFITS, drinking Four Loko’s with fitted flat bill size 14 5/8 hats from Lids arguing about being blooded in their game and the whereabouts of a wand, it’s so shitty.
I can go on for days.
The Elf Fed’s (again, thats not a generalization joke on my part, that is actually what they decided to call them in a major motion picture) Leader who’s name I’m leaving out cause it doesn’t fucking matter, stares in to the camera, and with a full head of icy blue hair that he must straighten hourly, he says…
“If you act like my enemy, you become my enemy.”
Hard cringe.
Or how about the time Orc-Cop Jakoby got pinned, by a moving car, into a row of gas station coolers full of icy beverages not just once, but twice! He jogged away from the accident. Just after, he and Will Smith get punched five or six times by Orc’s and they are out for the count, too wounded to get away. No mas.
I had a difficult time paying attention, so maybe that’s what happened. Perhaps when they were reviewing the film, they couldn’t pay attention either, so a bunch of truly terrible scenes slipped through to the final cut as they scrolled through their Instagram feeds.
Or maybe Netflix just pays everybody up front and they all show up on set hungover and ready to get it over with.
Netflix is still great, and despite the nightmare that was Suicide Squad, I still believe in David Ayer, but Bright sucks, and isn’t worth the watch.
You’re welcome for saving two hours of your time.
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