Clay Kaytis & Fergal Reilly’s The Angry Birds Movie (2016) Review

Clay Kaytis & Fergal Reilly’s The Angry Birds Movie (2016) Review

Directed by Clay Kaytis, Fergal Reilly; Written by Jon Vitti; Voice Cast Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader, Peter Dinklage, Sean Penn, Keegan-Michael Key, Kate McKinnon, Tony Hale, Hannibal Buress, Ike Barinholtz and Tituss Burgess; Music Composed by Heitor Pereira Rated UA; 97 minutes; In wide release May 27, 2016.

“The Angry Birds” movie is based on popular Smartphone game that’s been downloaded over 3 billion times since its launch in December 2009, drawing a lot of inspiration from “Crush of Castle” [mobile game developed by Armor Brothers]. From then a single application to a stall of brand enhancing opportunities, Rovio has done everything possible to tap and expand their cosmos (by releasing 17 versions of gaming application, toys and TV Series). This all brings back around as Rovio teams up with Sony Pictures Image works releases the first feature film of this iconic game in The Angry Birds movie. Does this film fly high or crashes down or is it too late for this project to strive?

Few people already called “The Angry Bird” movie a 90 minutes commercial, but that dismisses the fact that people will see this film because they have played the game not the other way around. This is an unlogical extension for a franchise that wants to penetrate taste on every level and remain applicable for as long as there’s money to be made. “The Angry Birds” is an timeserving attempt to “make hay while the sun shines” that’s barren of elements that would have given it an extensive life.

Why don’t bird fly?

Because where else we ever wanna go?

Under the protection of “Mighty Eagle” a colony of birds has set up a governed, civilized life on Bird Island. Following Red, the titular angry bird, audience are initially introduced to competent story of a disgruntled young bird whose glum personality isolates him from the community of non flying, island dwelling birds. Along come the pigs; a ship load of selfish swine that to fool the loving populace and slip their treasured eggs. In short, “The Angry Birds” movie is about fat colonialists outraging the land of a peaceful people, atrocities of colonialism.

As source materials go, they rarely come as flimsy and simplistic as “The Angry Birds” mobile game. But money making – marketing talks and collective 3 billion downloads gave Sony plenteous reasons to green lit this film, but the final product is piddle poor to say the least.

The voice work is serviceable; Red’s sarcastic wit is produced cleanly by Jason Sudeikis.  Josh Gad of Frozen fame voices Chuck in a rapid fire performance that is funny in parts.  Though I’m not a fan of him in general, Danny McBride’s Bomb came across as a lovable misfit. Aside from the main cast, several big stars provided voice for supportive roles, but they all deserved so much better than this forced and even annoying kids movie. Practically none of the characters are likable, most of the jokes are amazingly predictable (Thanks to the Trailers!) and the constant puns also forced that they were almost cringe worthy.

To give “The Angry Birds” movie its due, it looks nice in generic, computer generated way. The animation artists went to great detail in creating 130 different birds and over 100 different pigs. As both the co-directors Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reily have backgrounds in animation (Kaytis worked for Disney Production, From Pocahontas till Frozen). The movie decently expands the landmarks and characters from the Smartphone game. The color palette is somewhat flashy but that’s in keeping with the productions over esthetic, which features some extremely bad over produced song and dance numbers that should have been left on the editing room floor.

“The Angry Birds” movie is so obviously constructed from the game spare parts and desperate for success that’s it clear no one involved really cared about the story/characters they were telling or why they were telling it. The saddest part is that an huge crew of animators had to suffer to make this mess, even though no one at the top cared about the results. All of that work went to waste. All in all, “The Angry Birds” movie proves yet again that Hollywood doesn’t really do well at adapting games and this one has all the same problems.

Survi Review: 1.5/5

Theatrical Trailer: