This review of “The Starling” was first published after the film’s premiere at the 2021 Toronto Film Festival.
Sometimes things aren’t always what they seem: “The Starling,” for example, is an impressively credited drama that premiered at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival on its way to Netflix. So viewers may be surprised to find they’ve happened upon a movie that would feel far more at home on the Hallmark Channel.
Then again, sometimes things are exactly what they seem. And in nearly every other way, predictability defines Ted Melfi’s disappointing follow-up to his widely-admired Oscar nominee “Hidden Figures” and his enjoyably prickly indie “St. Vincent.”
Just as its name announces, “The Starling” is all about learning to fly. This increasingly blunt metaphor includes an actual avian, who swoops through the opening credits in a clunky effect that simultaneously recollects the plastic bag from “American Beauty” and the “Forrest Gump” feather.
Sometimes things aren’t always what they seem: “The Starling,” for example, is an impressively credited drama that premiered at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival on its way to Netflix. So viewers may be surprised to find they’ve happened upon a movie that would feel far more at home on the Hallmark Channel.
Then again, sometimes things are exactly what they seem. And in nearly every other way, predictability defines Ted Melfi’s disappointing follow-up to his widely-admired Oscar nominee “Hidden Figures” and his enjoyably prickly indie “St. Vincent.”
Just as its name announces, “The Starling” is all about learning to fly. This increasingly blunt metaphor includes an actual avian, who swoops through the opening credits in a clunky effect that simultaneously recollects the plastic bag from “American Beauty” and the “Forrest Gump” feather.
- 9/23/2021
- by Elizabeth Weitzman
- The Wrap
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