The Angry Birds Movie - Review

Red is the odd bird out, a disgruntled loner on Bird Island whose generic ire rubs the rest of the happy residents the wrong way. Never mind the sheer fact that we see the other denizens as jerks and bullies some times, apparently Red is the only one who should be punished and sentenced into taking anger management classes. All of a sudden, a pirate ship full of green pigs arrive on the isle bearing gifts, whose dark intentions can only be spotted and warned by Red and his fellow mean spirits. THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE is simply so-so, thus sadly making it one of the better video game adaptations of all time. The conflict is as basic as it was in the original mobile time-waster ("Our eggs! Let's GET 'EM!") and Rovio and Sony spend most of the film's energy and money on being broadly entertaining and kinetically animated. However, though I can suitably kick back a lazy afternoon with this in front of me, the movie is liable of infecting viewers with ADD. Everything is so rushed and debilitating to the senses, with a random pop musical number arriving every eight minutes, destructive action sequences where nothing can be comprehended, and montages that don't know how to lapse time properly. The clearest example happens right at the end, when you sit through another animated dance finale only to oddly cut to little scene where some just recently introduced beings get to do their video game special move. It's like first-time directors Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly were so enamored with the character of Chuck, voiced by Josh Gad, that they wanted to imbue his speed demon behavior into the fabric of the film. Speaking of acting, save for maybe Gad, Danny McBride as the calmly explosive Bomb and Peter Dinklage as the severely lame Mighty Eagle, the way too talented voice cast is utterly wasted, further giving proof that maybe it's better to give some movie voice work to real voice actors. People like Kate McKinnon, Titus Burgess, Billy Eichner, and Charli XCX, to name a few, are given absolutely nothing to work with, nor are they able to stand out to due to the near nil characterization of all of the animals. But why should the makers care about anything like individual personalities when they can have a sequence set to Limp Bizkit's horrendous cover of "Behind Blue Eyes"? If you can accept the CG chaos for what it is and are fine with you or your kids hearing "Flock my life" or "We're angry flocking birds!" in a PG movie, this could be a fine throwaway rental later down the line.


FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5