Not having ever played the Angry Birds video game in any form, I walked into this film hoping that wouldn’t be an issue. As with any film whose source material is something other than an original screenplay, one of the measures of success is whether it holds any appeal or entertainment value for those completely unfamiliar with its origins. And for the most part, THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE is a totally acceptable, but largely unremarkable, work featuring a few laughs and a whole lot of familiar voice actors popping in to capitalize on the raging popularity of the game.
What little I knew about Angry Birds seems to be represented in the film. There are a handful of genuinely angry birds, all of which live in a place where being unhappy is not acceptable, even punishable by forced attendance at anger management classes. Our lead bird, Red (voiced by Jason Sudeikis), seems aware that letting his rage take over is bad, but by the end of the film, he’s told by the more even-tempered birds that his anger is the only thing that can save them. Talk about strange message for a family-oriented film. Other birds in the anger group include the speedster Chuck (Josh Gad); Bomb (Danny McBride), who literally explodes when he gets really emotional; Matilda (Maya Rudolph); and a largely silent giant of a bird named Terence, whose grunts are provided by none other than Sean Penn, which might be the funniest gag in the film.
The birds were taught to idolize a long-absent feathered friend simply known as the Mighty Eagle, but when he is called upon to help save the bird city from a potentially terrible tragedy, the slovenly creature (voiced with the proper amount of pomp by Peter Dinklage) is effectively useless and the angry birds must take the lead and save the population themselves. Bill Hader pops into town as a seemingly friendly pig named Leonard, but before long the strange vibe he gives us makes us believe that before too long he’s going to explain that Soylent Green is birds. Other vocal talent is provided by Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Tituss Burgess, Ike Barinholtz, SNL’s Kate McKinnon, and the great Hannibal Buress.
Naturally, THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE features the game’s toppling of tall and supremely unstable buildings, which collapse rather easily when a bird is slingshot into them (in this world, birds can’t fly naturally), so those looking for familiar sign posts have little to fear. Co-directors Clay Kaytis (an animator for FROZEN, WRECK-IT RALPH, and TANGLED) and Fergal Reilly (a storyboard artist on HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA, THE SMURFS, and CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS) do a solid job keeping things moving, making sure the jokes pummel us with enough frequency that we mostly only remember the ones that stick. The animation seems fairly straight forward—far from cheap and sloppy, but not especially groundbreaking either.
Sudeikis’s gift for honed sarcasm is the basis for much of the comedy here, and sometimes his act wears a little thin. As he did in Frozen, Gad creates an oddball character that seems to get the bulk of the awkward laughs, but it’s strange that the sequences with Chuck moving at his fastest are remarkably similar to the Quicksilver sequences in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, where all seems to be at a standstill while Chuck moves things around as required. It’s still funny, even if we’re seen it before.
Maybe it’s just because we haven’t seen much in the way of worthy animation (at least from America) yet this year that I’m feeling generous toward THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE. It’s a decidedly average effort that I’m still mildly recommending, if only because the movie might actually make kids with anger issues feel a bit less like pariahs in their families and other social outlets.
