Went to see The Angry Birds movie tonight because I’m stupid and apparently have $10 to blow on an evening show of a terrible movie. But there was a chance it wasn’t going to be terrible – the reviews are mixed and seemed to imply that maybe this wasn’t the massive train-wreck people expected it to be.
Well, I beg to disagree. This is a terrible movie that drags out a short story over 90 tedious and slogging moments… worse than seeing a bad movie is seeing a bad movie that’s padding its run-time to justify the ticket cost. Ugh.
To be fair, there are some smatterings of smirk-worthy humor and bad (good?) puns early on… and some of these even elicited a chuckle. So I thought we were onto something… but then it just… stopped. I stopped having even a marginal amount of fun and was just waiting for them to get to the plot and stop wasting time. Because it takes 60 minutes to get to the thrilling scenes of flightless birds launching themselves with a slingshot at the enemy pigs. Huh. I guess that’s not enough to make for an exciting, well-crafted story, as it turns out.
Yes, this is a kids movie and I’m not the target demo…. but, then again, it’s not like the game developer made all that money on eight year olds. Some grown-ass adults played that game a ton and this isn’t going to amuse or interest them… except in that it might entertain little kids and provide winking references to the source material.
Also, I should note that the movie’s themes are curious. It’s about an angry and frustrated and permanently annoyed bird. He was the one I smirked at because he was angry at everything and sometimes that’s fun to see. The story is, at its core, about how we should fear foreigners who come to our shores, pretending to be our friends, but instead they steal our stuff. So we have to chase after them and use violence, mainly knocking down their buildings, to get our stuff back. I mean, that’s more or less the plot of the game too so I guess the film accurately represents its source material. But for parents who might want maybe a better message… hmmm.
Oh, and some of the humor is…. colorful. Example… the main bird has something annoying happen to him early on and he says (angrily), “Well pluck me then.” Ahem.
So, yeah, I really disliked this movie a lot. If you have kids, maybe it’s a diversion. For adults – or at least for me – it’s ruthlessly long and largely unfunny.
Score: 56