The Angry Birds Movie

Though it's clearly been made with a lot of cheer and good will, The Angry Birds Movie failed to connect with me.  Maybe it's because I'm one of the very few people who has never played the video game before, so I felt no affection toward these characters.  Or, most likely, the film's loud, pop culture-heavy humor and mindless action just did little to charm me.  I imagine kids will like it, though.  Really little kids.

As the film opens, we're introduced to Red (voice by Jason Sudeikis), who is one of the rare Angry Birds on an island populated with generally happy ones.  Funny thing, Red never really struck me as being "angry", more so sarcastic and snarky.  Red has a blowup at an innocent family while working as a birthday clown, so the island's judge (Keegan-Michael Key) sentences him to anger management.  There, he meets some of the other resident Angry Birds, including speedy Chuck (Josh Gad), a bird named Bomb (Danny McBride), who actually explodes when he is surprised or mad, and the silent Terence, who speaks only in a series of grunts and groans, kind of like Lurch in The Addams Family.  Here's another funny thing - According to the cast list, Terence's grunts were provided by Sean Penn.  Why they felt the need to hire an actor of Penn's skill to play a character who has no dialogue is a mystery, and ranks as one of the oddest moments of Celebrity Stunt Casting in recent memory.

We learn that Red has been isolated most of his life, which led to his current state.  He was teased as a kid for his unusually large eyebrows, and he lives alone on the beach on the island, far away from the rest of the town.  But Red will get the chance to be the hero at last when some strange green pigs show up on the bird island via large boats.  The leader of the pigs is the seemingly-friendly Leonard (Bill Hader), who claims that he has come to befriend the birds, as well as party and dance with them.  But Red soon learns the truth, and that the pigs are really there so that they can steal the birds' eggs, which are a delicacy to the pigs.  When no one will believe him, Red and his friends must set out and seek advice from The Mighty Eagle (Peter Dinklage), a legendary bird known for his heroic deeds long ago, but now lives in seclusion on top of a mountain.  When it turns out the Eagle is a crackpot and won't be of much use, Red must rally the entire island, and encourage them that they will have to get mad if they want to stop the pigs from stealing their eggs.

I think The Angry Birds Movie would have worked with a more original approach.  I can only imagine what Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the minds behind the inventive and hilarious The Lego Movie, could have done with this idea.  Instead, screenwriter Jon Vitti (who has worked on a variety of TV shows like The Simpsons and The Office) goes for a much more standard and marketable approach.  Much like the most recent uninspired CG film offerings, this movie goes for celebrity cameos, a lot of pop songs on the soundtrack, and movie references and parodies that will fly over kids' head (like a reference to The Shining that shows up late in the film), and fail to make adults laugh, because they're not that funny in the first place.  This is one of those kid's movies that feels like it has been test marketed to death in order to appeal to the widest possible audience, and only ends up feeling like a giant corporate commercial product.

Does the movie look good?  Sure.  It's bright and colorful, and some of the character designs are cute.  But there's simply nothing underneath.  There's also no real sign of wit or intelligence to the dialogue.  Instead, we get scenes like the one where Red sees a mother bird walking with her large flock of kids, and he asks her "Haven't you ever heard of bird control?".  And when the movie can't think of anything to say, it simply increases the volume, either by blasting a song on the soundtrack, or throwing in an action scene that mainly consists of a lot of explosions and characters screaming at each other.  From watching videos on line of the original video game, I can see how the film's climax could be considered an accurate cinematic recreation of it.  But it really wore on me.  After you see the first bird get launched from a slingshot into a building in order to knock it down, it doesn't get any better when you see it five or six more times after that.  Maybe that's why the original video game never grabbed my interest.

The thing is, there's not a whole lot to complain about outside of how unnecessary and corporate the while thing feels.  The voice actors are enthusiastic, and the movie looks good for a mid-budget animated film.  I also smiled at some of the background gags, such as a poster in the pig city advertising a production of Hamlet starring Kevin Bacon.  And I can't really knock it for not being faithful to the source material, because based on what I have seen and heard, it's pretty accurate.  So, maybe you have to have a fondness for the franchise to really get this one.  All I know is that as an outsider, the movie just never really clicked.  It also created no desire to download the original game when it was over.  I felt like I had seen enough to get the idea.  Still, I would like to think that if I was a devoted fan of the series before seeing the movie, I would still be put off by the noise and the dated pop culture humor.

If I had to rank The Angry Birds Movie, I would put it above recent uninspired entries like Ratchet & Clank and Norm of the North.  But it's definitely no Zootopia, and not even in the same league as April and the Extraordinary World.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

0 comments