‘Angry Birds’ Movie Mostly Lays An Egg
Well over a year ago, I saw an ad on Hulu for the Angry Birds movie, and after watching that ad, I had a morbid curiosity for its existence. Far from my normal otaku style obsession towards things, it intrigued me. It seemed like something that would have done very well in 1996, or as a Saturday morning cartoon show, maybe even direct to video, but I digress.
The movie takes us to an island populated entirely by happy, flightless birds — or almost entirely. In this paradise are outsiders Red (Jason Sudeikis of We’re the Millers, Horrible Bosses), a bird with a temper problem; speedy Chuck (Josh Gad in his first animated role since Frozen); and the volatile Bomb (Danny McBride, This is the End, Eastbound and Down). But when the island is visited by mysterious green piggies, it’s up to these unlikely outcasts to figure out what the pigs are up to.
As you can tell the movie has no shortage of comedic powerhouses in its ranks, and you can add Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, Peter Dinklage, and Hannibal Burress, but the movie sorely underutilizes them. They did amazing jobs as voice actors, (however Josh Gad is starting to become the Michael Cera of animated movies) but no one really popped for me. It’s like they were holding themselves back because it was based on a game played by both five year-olds, and adults with the attention spans of a five year-old, so they could do just enough to amuse little kids and easily offended parents.
But just because this was primarily a kid’s movie, they couldn’t simply play it completely safe, they added one or two “edgy” jokes to show that they acknowledge their over the age of 13 fan base — with such genius gags as Dinklage’s character Mighty Eagle urinating in the “Lake of Wisdom” that both Bomb and Chuck been playing in and drinking from! Because comedy! There were plenty of forced innuendoes to go around as well, but given the tone of the overall film, there is no reason for me to point them out.
And of course since it’s a video game movie, they can’t not pander to gamers! So the final act is basically a scene from the game, the birds literally use a giant slingshot (Which the pigs gave to them earlier! Because, plot convenience!) and attack Piggy Island to rescue their eggs! Honestly that part felt as tacked on as the first-person portion of the Doom movie!
It’s been well over a decade since I last sat down to watch a video game-to-movie adaptation. Ever since the days of Super Mario Bros. hitting the big screen, there have been very few that have managed to leave much of an impression on me, and to be honest Angry Birds fits snugly into that category. It tried too hard to be all things to all people, but it didn’t really do any of those things all that well.
The movie was cute at best, was about what I expected it to be, I wasn’t bored by it nor was I thoroughly entertained. If you’re looking for a cute field trip movie for your 3rd grade class, this is it, everyone else just Red Box it.
