Critic Reviews

If Blackbird shows us anything it’s that no matter how carefully we plan, life resists perfection, right up to the end.

"Blackbird" may be a tearjerker, but it’s also a reminder that there’s more to tears than tragedy, even in the midst of personal loss.

Thanks to Michell and a fine cast, it works admirably well — at least to a point, at which some viewers may feel [screenwriter Christian] Torpe piles on one crisis too many.

Director Roger Michell (“Venus,”Notting Hill”) cast this well and earns stellar on-the-nose performances from Sarandon, Wilson, Duncan and Wasikowska.

With its quasi-literary tone and over-calculated concessions to the messiness of real life, the movie settles for coming across like a clumsy amalgamation of the wonderful Amy Bloom short story “Love Is Not A Pie” and the 1998 Sarandon tearjerker "Stepmom." The hollow, unsatisfying feeling the movie leaves behind may be the most authentically funereal thing about it.

It’s less of a film and more of an actors’ workshop, an exercise for everyone involved but meaningless to us.

But as lovely as Blackbird can be, it’s never particularly insightful or compelling — for a film meant to celebrate life, the storytelling is curiously moribund.

There almost isn't a single shot in it where every member of the cast isn't Acting ... The result is, at times, insufferably pleased with itself.