Tuesday is a fascinating movie. It could have been quite good if it weren’t so full of so many unforced errors. Just a swath of “WTF are you guys even doing” content. Things that maybe worked in print but just came across as misguided on screen.

The flick is about a sick teenage girl who is having suicidal thoughts. So Death shows up… in the form of a dirty, ratty old multi-sized parrot with the voice of Caesar from Planet of the Apes. They have a dialog… and they listen to hip-hop… and vape. Meanwhile, the girl’s mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is trying hard to not deal with the situation.

Based on the second half of this film, I liked where this film was going. But it took a significant – and I mean a significant – amount of patience to get there. The first half is obsessed with this bizarre parrot idea. Every time it showed up, I’d be taken out of the movie wondering, seriously, what were they thinking? It didn’t help the bird was sometimes hard to understand given the croaking voice… and I don’t think they had confidence in the CGI model since he was so often shrouded in murky darkness (on top of having dirty, indistinct feathers).

Now, except for a skeleton in a cloak (and Brad Pitt), I’m not exactly sure what a personification of death SHOULD look like… but maybe a parrot wouldn’t be my first choice. But it was a choice and I kept cocking my head like a dog hearing the mailman any time it was on screen. I just couldn’t get on their wavelength… what were they trying to say and why were they saying it with a croaking parrot?

I’m also not sure if this is a comedy or not. I think it’s being funny sometimes but I’m not sure if it’s being funny all the time. It’s so misguided and weird, I can barely even assign it a genre. A genre other than “what the actual F were they thinking?” anyways.

Late in the film when Julia Louis-Dreyfus takes over the plot, I started to get into where the movie was going. And she had some genuinely emotional moments and a finale that I could groove with (even the parrot wasn’t a total mess).

This movie is a disaster and would have been a total dam buster if the bird didn’t go away occasionally. When he wasn’t there, I think the movie is pretty good. You just have to get there… and I stand in solidarity with anyone who can’t. But I was never bored and found just enough to enjoy that maybe it’s not a total loss.

Score: 71