4) It’s a fantastic black comedy
Like another film with a verbose title, known in its abbreviated form as Dr. Strangelove, Birdman is a comedy so dark that it is certainly possible for audiences to fail to see the joke. While Birdman is not quite as sizzling a satire as Kubrick’s 1964 film, it is filled with wry and outrageous touches. The motion picture academy rarely gives comedies the praise they deserve, yet Birdman’s whirl of self-reflexive jokes, zany sequences and droll put-downs made it one of the year’s funniest films.
The film is filled with hilarity in various ways. It is hard to think of a signature funny moment from Birdman because there are so many. Riggan’s clumsy walk through Times Square in his white underwear after getting locked out of the stage door is one. Norton’s ostentatious portrait of a serious actor – one that needs a tanning bed ordered to get into character – is another. The pointed references to current celebrities and the fad of selling out to bankrupt franchises films are cunning, as are the bewildered reactions of citizens interacting with Riggan when he takes flight over the New York avenues as Birdman.
There is a lot of sly satire in Birdman. Despite some of the film’s darker departures in the final third, few movies in recent memory have captured the lunacy of show business with such inspiration and incisive humor.