The Starling

This bird's not worth watching.

The dialogue lacks the saltiness that made St. Vincent work so well, and the many pauses in the action allow plenty of opportunity for mawkishness to seep in. While McCarthy is certainly the best thing in it, she does have her limits.

It just doesn't get the mix quite right -- you can get from there to here.

Everything in this film is a symbol... It feels like a waste.

If you're tempted to add it to your queue, McCarthy's open-faced performance is reason enough to give it your time, even if nearly everything surrounding her feels unworthy.

The Starling has come out the other side an utterly bizarre, tonal misfire that fumbles through several ideas before implying that it's perfectly OK to berate the suicidal for being so suicidal.

The talented cast ensures that each of them has the opportunity to have a genuine moment on screen. The problem is that director Theodore Melfi is more concerned with making the film's message clear.

While ambitious, entertaining and touching, the story becomes repetitive and heavy-handed, and its transitions from humor to gravity are at times awkward.

The Starling is perfectly fine. The cast is pretty good and the story is effective. It’s just a bit hard to appreciate in its totality when it makes something so hard to have for yourself seem so simple.

It doesn’t exactly make for a bad movie, but it can’t be called good either.