Angry Birds Movie

Angry Birds Movie

Directed by Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly

Rating: C+

It’s pretty common knowledge that most movies adapted from video games are shit, (Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, any Sonic the Hedgehog film). Despite this, they are still being made; a fact that I am biased towards being happy about because I bloody love video games. Something that is truly astonishing to me however, is that Angry Birds, a casual, free to play mobile game, has been made into its own feature length film. 

I remember wasting hours in IT class in year 12 playing this game and seeing the characteristics of the birds translated onto the big screen gave me a little bit of warm and fuzzy nostalgia. The animation is beautiful and the movements and expressions of each bird are incredibly well done, especially Chuck (the yellow, speedy bird) who is also voiced phenomenally well by Josh Gad (who also voices Olaf from Frozen!).

But the nostalgia didn’t last long, and despite laughing maybe three or four times, the rest of the film is average and really mismatched with a classic “the underdog rescues the town from the evil invaders” plot line. Also the soundtrack is super weird, they have Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Steve Aoki. That familiar guitar riff from Behind Blue Eyes by Limp Bizkit started playing in a downtrodden moment for Red, which was hilarious to me and I found myself laughing more at the supposedly “sad” segment, than the parts that were supposed to funny (because most of it was so bizarre and out of place). There are sexual innuendos, references to The Shining as well as really random meme references. 

When there are way better “children’s” films being played at this time like Zootopia and The Jungle Book, The Angry Birds Movie doesn’t really stand a chance, but I still have huge respect for the franchise to be able to release a multi million dollar animated film as a casual mobile game that has completely blown up to become mainstream.

This article first appeared in Issue 13, 2016.
Posted 12:28pm Sunday 29th May 2016 by Lisa Blakie.