Review: The Angry Birds Movie

An island of flightless, talking birds are visited by a tribe of green pigs…and one of the birds (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) thinks the seemingly benevolent visitors (whose leader is voiced by Bill Hader) are up to no good.

 

If you’re a fan of the game, you might get more out of this 2016 animated film from co-directors Clay Kaytis (an animator) and Fergal Reilly (storyboard artist) than I did. I found myself completely at a loss to understand exactly what I was watching. The basic idea to me sounded like the kind of family movie that adults would get to understand a level of, and kids another. The themes might seem somewhat mature, and in a way it’s kind of gross and edgy at times. However, for the most part the film plays very much like the other kind of family film: The pure kiddie flick, destined to be enjoyed by no one over the age of about 13, I would think. It’s very, very pat stuff. Perhaps it’s in an awkward in-between state of the two kinds of family picture. At any rate, this 40 year-old viewer couldn’t make heads or tails of the result on the whole. Why are they called “Angry Birds” when they’re only seen as angry from a collective standpoint for about 2 minutes of the film (and even then, not all of them seem angry)? Why are the pigs green? Are they meant to be aliens? Well no, they travel over water so they’re clearly from the same planet. Great, so again…why are they green? And why pigs? Are birds and pigs some kind of age-old sworn enemies I wasn’t aware of? And if so, why? Meanwhile, why does the soundtrack of a kids movie feature Sabbath, country and western, hippity-hop, and The Carpenters? See, if I was enjoying the film (or if I was 5 years old), I probably wouldn’t have been asking myself these possibly stupid, petty questions. I got next to nothing out of this film. Was the randomness of it all meant to be funny? Is it kind of a SpongeBob or Ren and Stimpy thing? ‘Coz I don’t get those, either. I mean, why were the non-alien somehow-green pigs doing line-dancing at one point?

 

The animation is colourful, I liked that one cute bird that sticks its tongue out. The birds don’t look photo-realistic, but they do have a cute, textured, plush toy quality to them that I liked. Meanwhile, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, and Bill Hader give somewhat lively vocal performances in a film full of entirely non-descript voice work by a disappointing line-up of quite well-known performers. Jason Sudeikis in particular, does not have a suitably interesting or distinct voice for animation voiceover work. Even Kate McKinnon somehow manages to be pretty indistinct here. Nup, on the whole this one just didn’t work for me. If you liked it, awesome. I’m just not one of you. I suppose there could be merit in a plot where animals act out a colonisation story, but why pigs and birds? Why green pigs? And who is this really aimed at? It seems neither fish nor fowl.

 

Unfunny, deadly boring, rather strange…and not enough birds who are consistently angry enough to be called “Angry Birds”. If anything, it ought to have been called “Angry Green Pigs Who Possibly Aren’t Aliens”. This just had me scratching my head the entire time, trying to figure out what on Earth I was meant to make of it. It’s all very noisy and random, and not enough for the adults to latch on to….or at least this adult. Your mileage may seriously differ, but I doubt most of the people who like the film are above 18 years in age. The animation…is nice, the film is a bore. I hope you enjoyed reading the most useless review of all-time.

 

Rating: C-