It is challenging to write a review of a movie like Birdemic. Great movies inspire one to try to write to their level in praise of them. Bad movies give one an excuse to tear down the movie, to try to provoke laughter in the reader at the ineptitude of the film. Then, there's Birdemic.

It's not that Birdemic isn't a bad film. Far from it, it is certainly one of the worst ever made, up there with The Room, "Manos" The Hands of Fate and Plan 9 From Outer Space. That is, in fact, the problem.

Take a merely horrible movie, like Battlefield Earth. Was it misguided? Yes. Was it made for the wrong reasons? Definitely. Should it have been made better? Given the millions of dollars behind its production, yes. Does it deserve to have the Internet Mockery Cannon leveled at its bulbous, dreadlocked head? Oh my, yes.

Now, take a really bad movie, like Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. All of the things that were true about Battlefield Earth are true of it (and it cost a lot more to make), but add another to the list: it is reprehensible. There are scenes in the film involving dog sex. The hero's parents seem to hate each other. Two robots seem to communicate solely by means of black stereotypes. The movie devotes a significant amount of screen time to a tracking shot of a young woman's butt. It's almost as if the director doesn't believe in his movie about giant robots that can turn into cars and jets and their cosmic war against each other, so he pads it out with all this pandering. But if he doesn't believe in this admittedly goofy premise, why is he even here? Not only is it good to make fun of Transformers 2, it's almost a moral obligation.

And now we come to Birdemic. Oh, lordy lordy.

Birdemic has computer special effects shots that consist of birds hovering in place over live footage, in a manner a lot like a bluescreen process shot, except much less convincing. It has birds dive-bombing gas stations and causing explosions. The first half of the movie has nothing at all to do with birds; it's just the film showing us what a great life the hero has. Once the birdening begins, a young pair of children lose their parents to the deadly deadly birds; they are rescued by the lead couple and promptly forget their parents ever existed. In one place a number of hapless people are sprayed with bird urine and writhe and die in a laughably unconvincing manner. This is by no means a comprehensive list of the movie's faults; if I wrote that we'd be here all night.

Birdemic is a special kind of awful, almost badness to be proud of. But three things stop me from sinking my teeth into this cinematic turdsteak:
1. No joke I could make at its expense could be funnier than the movie itself. It is a perfect thing already; how could I elaborate upon a diamond?
2. Birdemic, for all its flaws, was made earnestly. Director James Nguyen seems to be an okay kind of guy, if one with little talent for filmmaking. If you're sitting and watching Birdemic that's one thing. If something tries to punch you in the face, it's okay to fight back; it's only self-defense.
3. Since the badness of Birdemic is the entire draw, describing it arguably spoils the experience. The movie ramps up its badness so well that it's almost like its own story progression.

So anyway, go see Birdemic. The jokes you make at its expense, occasioned by the sheer disbelief you will feel that this somehow got made, will make for a much richer experience than reading any description I could write.

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