The Angry Birds Movie

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Red (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) has lived his entire life with an anger management issue. He’s the most hated bird on his bird-inhabited island, and an incident puts him squarely in anger management class. One day, a ship full of a bunch of pigs (led by an obviously evil, but still entertaining Bill Hader) arrive. Red is the only one who sees that something is wrong, and attempts to do something about it. Angry Birds is much better than it has any right to be. The voice cast is pretty solid. For example, Jason Sudeikis sells Red’s dry sarcastic tone. Sean Penn creates a memorable and funny character despite only speaking in growls (not a word of dialogue, and you’d never know it was him). On that note, the writing for the characters is strong. Nowhere do I find that more obvious than in the character of the Mighty Eagle (voiced by the great Peter Dinklage). He’s a character that I think works because of a mix of writing and performance. The animation is top notch. It’s CGI, but manages to create a style that still looks and feels like old school Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. It’s very fast-paced and energetic, which I don’t see too often anymore. The movie does manage to follow the game by showing the conflict between the birds and pigs. However, I do have to acknowledge that the story is fairly cliched as well. I don’t how often I’ve seen the story element of the obvious villain that fakes being nice, or the misunderstood hero, the list goes on. While I did think the movie was funny overall, there just weren’t as many points where I roared with laughter as I would have liked. Overall, I do recommend this movie as a solid one-and-done rental.

7 / 10