Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Bad. I don’t hate this movie as much as it probably deserves, maybe because I spent a lot of time looking into its history instead of watching it. I don’t know whether it could have been good, but it hamstrings itself by not choosing a lane: it wants to be a beautiful wildlife documentary, and a voiced-over quasi-cartoon, and a fair capturing of Richard Bach’s monster best-seller; and in being unwilling to let go of any of those, it fails at all of them.
Shot before routine Humane Society supervision of animal treatment, the film reportedly was responsible for dozens of gulls’ deaths. Those sensitive to animal abuse should definitely take a pass.