“Melissa McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd trade in their usual, more traditional comedic personas and performances to play a couple struggling through grief and loss in Netflix’s sappy and unfocused The Starling, featuring a distractingly out-of-sync CGI bird causing pesky problems while also being a metaphor for, you know, life’s mysteries and stuff.
“McCarthy and O’Dowd do their darnedest and give their utmost in a film that wants very much to be an exploration of sorrow and heartache, but also one with a quirky Garden State-style dramedy vibe that sanitizes and just about sinks the entire thing.
“Throw in the bird (the titular starling) that whisks around in a cloud of overly sentimental pandering, feeling like the feather in Forrest Gump, and the actual serious and wrenching subject finds itself washed out to sea by a tide of silly hokum.”
Read more at IGN
