Wednesday, December 28, 2016

The Angry Birds Movie - DVD Review

THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE (PG) Starring the voices of Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Peter Dinklage, Bill Hader, Kate McKinnon, Keegan-Michael Key, Sean Penn, Tony Hale and Jillian Bell.
Written by Jon Vitti.
Directed by Clay Kaytis & Fergal Reilly.

★★½

Well, this is probably the best possible movie you could make out of this material, right? It's about a community of birds, none of whom can fly. One bird named Red (Jason Sudeikis) doesn't quite fit in. He's sarcastic and has anger issues, and after an incident, he's forced to attend anger management classes.

But then the piggies arrive. The birds have never heard of the piggies, but they come with gifts and loud noises and colors and hey-look-over-there! Red suspects there's something shady about Head Pig Leonard (Bill Hader) and wants to investigate, but the townspeople think it's just Red being his usual antisocial self.

The movie doesn't have much story to stretch to 90 minutes, so it fills in the gaps with risque jokes and visual gags. The third act is when the movie really gets into the game-play, with the birds catapulting themselves into the pigs' flimsily-constructed city to go rescue their eggs. There's a lot of talented voices in here, so while it didn't make laugh, it did make me smile a few times.

One bizarre note: two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn voices one of the birds, but all he does is grumble.

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