Avis Metacritic

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.

Even though you can see the strings in the puppet act, the plight of the characters still sometimes manages to get to you.

The picture’s biggest flaw is that it’s so mellow it occasionally veers into inertia.

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.