“Wild Canaries” (Netflix) — My full review is here. It’s like Woody Allen’s “Manhattan Murder Mystery” set among the artisanal cupcake set, as a Brooklyn couple try to figure out who killed the elderly lady in their building. It’s lightweight, fizzy fun, an homage to screwball comedies of the days of yore.
“Wild Canaries” is now playing in New York and Los Angeles and is available to rent on video-on-demand, including Amazon Prime and iTunes. Not rated, 1:42, three stars out of four.
You know what a musical “sting” is? It’s a sudden jolt of “Duh DUH!” music in a movie soundtrack, like a blast of horns, intended to maximize the surprise or shock of a moment in a movie, usually in a thriller.
“Wild Canaries” has comically oversized stings, stings that don’t just startle you, but come right up and punch you in the face. These are “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”-sized stings. That they’re so ridiculously big speaks to the tone of Lawrence Michael Levine’s funny, fizzy screwball comedy, an homage to old mystery spoofs set among the hipsters of Brooklyn.
Madison Movie 