The first reviews for Netflix’s Will Smith film ‘Bright’ aren’t exactly glowing.
Netflix’s most expensive project to date, Bright, starring Will Smith and Joel Eggerton premieres on the streaming service tomorrow, December 22nd with Netflix confirming today that they are doubling down with a planned sequel to the $90 million feature.
Critics however have not shared their optimism;
“That old Hollywood standby, the venerable buddy cop movie, may have met its anguished demise this holiday season. Will Smith just killed it,” writes Mark Kennedy for the Associated Press.
Jordan Hoffman in Vanity Fair calls it, “an absolute wreck”.
IndieWire‘s David Erlich says, “there’s boring, there’s bad, and then there’s Bright, a movie so profoundly awful that Republicans will probably try to pass it into law over Christmas break” adding that it’s “a dull and painfully derivative ordeal.”
“Bright takes a bunch of gobbledygook from The Lord of the Rings, liquefies it in a blender and pours it liberally over the same ‘corrupt cop comes to a moral crossroads’ blueprint that Ayer has been copying since Training Day’,” writes Todd Gilchrist of The Wrap.
Noel Murray in The Los Angeles Times adds, “It’s hard to imagine Bright inspiring anyone to want to see or make a full-blown series of films. Aside from a few nifty ideas and the occasional amusing or exciting scene, this film is a chore.”
There were a stuttering of positive reviews however;
Peter Debruge in Variety says that “it fills an intense, grown-up movie niche that Hollywood once did so well, but has since replaced with formula-driven product.”
Steve Rose of The Guardian agrees, saying, “for all its flaws, Bright is still a headlong leap into a bracingly different new world. Cinema could do with more of that.”
Source: Yahoo movies.
Bright is available on Netflix December 22nd (regional variances may apply).