Bright feels like an ambitious experiment with a noble subtext, which could easily have been made with entirely human characters. Perhaps then it might have felt less laboured and contrived.

| Jul 29, 2019

Bright uses barely developed magical elements to tell a barely developed story about racism and prejudice in America. On both fronts, it fails.

| May 7, 2018

Perhaps expecting Bright to ask pertinent questions or think beyond its "Orc is the New Black" conceit was too much. As such, the limited world-building is just window-dressing for a basic survive-the-night thriller that putters along on toxic fumes

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 30, 2017

... the movie delivers a unique if imperfect two-hour distraction.

| Dec 28, 2017

Unfortunately, the results are laughable.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 27, 2017

Bright is basically a tired buddy-cop movie dressed up in bizarre trappings.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 26, 2017

Ironically, it's exactly the kind of Z-grade blockbuster that people would typically describe by saying 'Eh, just wait and watch it on Netflix.'

| Original Score: 3/10 | Dec 23, 2017

The film creates an audacious alternative reality where orcs, elves and fairies live among us and form part of a vibrant criminal underworld. The first 30 minutes, at least, is wildly accomplished film-making from the director David Ayer.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 22, 2017

Bright is a bloated, expensive mess, a Netflix movie with blockbuster aspirations and faerie-sized brains.

| Dec 22, 2017

Bright plays like the kind of movie a kid might make up ("And then this happens! And then this happens!") if they were given a very rough overview of American history and then told to write a script about it.

| Dec 22, 2017

Finally, high fantasy for the sunglasses-on-the-back-of-the-head set.

| Original Score: C- | Dec 22, 2017

You can't spell "law force" without "orc." And you can't spell "David Ayer's twelfth cop movie??" without "Why develop? Is it a dare?"

| Original Score: C- | Dec 22, 2017

An absolute mess.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 22, 2017

At its best, Bright offers a clever critique of racism from a world of spells and sorcery. It's complicated.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 22, 2017

In the end, Bright pulls off the uncommon (and not at all admirable) hat trick of being confusing, boring, and vaguely insulting about the matters it wants to appear smart on.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 21, 2017

Worth watching for the sight of Will Smith beating a fairy to death with a broom, but it takes a far more sophisticated grasp of the fantasy concept to really get away with Mordor.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 21, 2017

Bills itself as part buddy-cop movie, part lavish fantasy, does neither justice, resulting in lazy nonsense that's too silly to be good and too self-serious to be any fun.

| Original Score: D+ | Dec 21, 2017

Critics have already lined up to pillory Bright as among the year's worst releases. Don't believe the clickbait.

| Dec 21, 2017

Bright has some merit, especially if you're into magic wands, explosions, gun fights and Will Smith, but perhaps the most disappointing thing about the film is that it could have been so much more.

| Dec 21, 2017

... ultimately "Bright" simply lacks the screenwriting smarts to capitalize on the social commentary in its setup that it so nakedly attempts to harness.

| Dec 21, 2017