The Angry Birds Movie (2016)

Starring: Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, Peter Dinklage, Kate McKinnon, Sean Penn, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Blake Shelton, Charli XCX, Billy Eichner, Hannibal Buress, Noah Schnapp, Ike Barinholtz, Alex Borstein, Ali Wong, and Mckenna Grace
Grade: A+

You probably don’t hear this often, but the game is nowhere near as good as the movie.

Summary

On Bird Island (an island full of colorful flightless birds), we see Red (Sudeikis) rush to a “hatchday party” he was paid to be a clown at, as well as deliver a cake to. He shows up an hour after the party is over, and the cake is ruined too because a squirrel being slammed face first into it. The father (Buress) of the kid that hired him chastises him at the door and tells Red he has to pay for the cake. This infuriates the short-tempered Red, and he slams the cake in the bird’s face. As he walks backwards and continuously talks shit to the bird and his family, he slips on the squirrel that ruined the cake and crashes into an unhatched egg, revealing to the family they had a boy.

Following this, we get a montage of Red showing off his ill-tempered ways and how he used to be bullied when he was younger because of his big bushy eyebrows.

Following this, Red is on trial for disrupting the hatching of the family’s egg in the opening. It doesn’t go too well for him, especially with the baby bird that hatched calling him “daddy” in front of all the bird citizens. Judge Peckinpah (Key) resides over the case and reminds Red how everyone on Bird Island is happy, carefree, and without conflict, except for him. He singles Red out as a weirdo for possessing anger within him. He points out to Red that when he moved his house out of their tight-knit village to the beach outside of town, nobody stopped him because nobody likes him. Red responds by calling Peckinpah out by not being as tall as he is, and he rips off his coat to show everyone how Peckinpah is standing on top of another bird to look taller.

Peckinpah then sentences Red to the maximum penalty allowed by the law: anger management class.

After an angry walk over to the class and subsequently destroying the annoying lawn ornament on the front lawn of the place, Red walks into the small hut to meet the Infinity Acceptance Group. The overly enthusiastic teacher in Matilda (Rudolph) leads the proceedings, and she introduces Red to the rest of the group. This includes the small, extremely quick, fast-talking Chuck (Gad), the massive Terence (Penn) who only communicates by grunting and growling, and a pretty nice bird named Bomb (McBride). Chuck is there because while a cop was writing him a speeding ticket, he destroyed the cop’s office, stole money from his wallet and bought everyone at the bar a drink, and actually shit on him. Bomb has the ability to explode and accidentally blew up someone’s house after a surprise party, and Terence’s crimes were so scary, Matilda avoids mentioning it. Red tries to leave, but Matilda sits him down aggressively, telling him he can stop coming once she notifies the court his anger issues have been resolved. After some talking with the group, Matilda leads them in a group yoga exercise, but the first stretch causes Bomb to blow up the hut, ending class early. After class, Chuck and Bomb try to hang out with Red, but he has no interest and heads home alone. He goes inside and looks over at his poster of Mighty Eagle (Dinklage), the protector of Bird Island.

We then go to a flashback of a grade school Red being told about Mighty Eagle with his class and how Mighty Eagle hasn’t been seen in years. A young Red asks when the island’s hero will come back, but his peers tell him Mighty Eagle isn’t real. Then, they give him shit for being an orphan and not having any friends.

Yeah, kids are dicks.

The next day, the birds are all supposed to share their poems with the class, but Red didn’t do his. When Chuck goes, he pulls out the destroyed lawn ornament and does his poem about it, finishing by outing Red as the culprit by showing the red feather from the scene. Red tries to blame Terence, so Terence punches him, sending him across the room. For some reason, they all mourn the loss of this fucking wooden statue and are all mad at Red, until they are interrupted by a big disturbance on the beach that alerts the entire village. Everyone comes out to the beach and sees a ship approaching shore. When it hits shore, it drops the anchor directly onto Red’s house, destroying half of the building. Out comes Leonard (Hader), a green pig who means no harm. The birds are not aware of any other animals in existence, so this comes as a shock to them. Flanked by his first officer pig Ross (Hale), Leonard says he saw them from across the sea on Piggy Island and thought, “Wonder what they’re up to”. He also says it’s only him and Ross on the ship. Red is ignored when he asks about his destroyed house, and Peckinpah greets Leonard and organizes a celebration of peace for the pigs that night for the whole village to come party at.

At the big ceremony, Red sits with Chuck and Bomb and isn’t too impressed with Leonard’s presentation. Leonard talks about having a “king”, and he shows them the invention of a trampoline with two more of his assistants jumping on it. Everyone is enthralled, but Red is the only one who remembers Leonard saying there was only two of them when they got there. Leonard shows everyone the slingshot afterwards and after hearing Red’s constant heckling, Leonard calls him up to demonstrate that the slingshot can do more than just fling fruit at people. He doesn’t want to go at first but is pressured by everyone cheering at him, so he goes up to the stage. Unfortunately, he’s launched right out of the village, and he crashes on the beach. He gets up and sees Leonard’s ship staring back at him. He knows something isn’t right about Leonard, so he goes to investigate the ship, with Chuck and Bomb joining him. They find a bunch of weird stuff on the ship, including a trampoline room. Bomb starts jumping on one, but it eventually breaks, and he falls through to the lower deck of the ship. Hiding in the lower deck are thousands of more pigs! Red goes marching straight back to the celebration and outs Leonard for lying about how many of them there are but as he talks aloud, he realizes he doesn’t know much else. He tries to point out how suspicious this is, but the birds turn on Red and start to boo. Leonard interrupts and admits he was lying, but it’s only because his pig cousins are morons, and he wanted to make sure the place they were visiting was safe before they were introduced. They planned on doing a “cowboy show” with all the pigs, but they decide not to because clearly, it wasn’t meant to be.

Peckinpah yells at Red in front of everyone and says he needs more anger management classes, even though this has nothing to do with anger, so Red leaves. This allows the “cowboy show” to go on as planned.

To the annoyance of Red, the pigs integrate themselves well with the happy hosts of Bird Island and everything seems to be going swimmingly. However, the birds will find out soon enough that Leonard’s plan was never about peace.

My Thoughts:

In a sea of Disney and Dreamworks films dominating the children’s market, The Angry Birds Movie stands out as one of the most underrated animated movies of the 2010s. Why has it been forgotten by so many? Granted, it does have some stuff working against it. The major problem being that when the movie came out, the game it was based on wasn’t nearly as popular as it once was. I remember when they first started promoting the movie and thinking, “Isn’t it a little late for a movie tie-in?”. This is probably why the sequel is even more forgotten than this one. Regardless, I absolutely loved the first movie of this two-film franchise.

The main character of Red is downright hilarious and incredibly relatable. He’s criticized by all of his peers for being “angry” all the time, but let’s be honest, he’s the only normal bird on Bird Island. This place is filled with this Disney mindset of everyone having to be happy and without conflict. Anyone who messes with this status quo is looked out as an outsider to this small community of birds. Red does have a temper, but he’s so likeable because not only is he a shit-talker, he’s also always down to argue or fight if he feels slighted. Plus, he’s not afraid to speak his mind. Basically, he’s the only one with a three-dimensional personality. The other citizens technically do as well, but they fight it because it’s not proper to be anything other than happy, according to the ego of Judge Peckinpah. Red is the only one who embraces his other emotions. Anger happens to be the one that shows the most because this unrealistic world he lives in would ruffle anyone’s feathers! He’s only acting like any one of us would in the same given situation. This is why he jumps off the page as such a likable protagonist. They act like being annoyed with overly happily people is a bad thing and he needs to be punished for it but think about this for a second…

Imagine that annoying co-worker who greets you every morning with unwanted conversation before you’ve had your coffee. Now, imagine EVERYONE in the workplace is like that and when you complain to HR, you’re fired.

This is essentially Bird Island.

Red is treated like a piece of shit unfairly, so he gives it right back to these birds and we love every second of it. Though he doesn’t show it as much, he does have a soft side too. It just takes him some time. You’ll see that when a character gives him a chance or shows some sort of attention to him that isn’t forced, he takes notice and loosens up. You may argue he was a dick to Chuck and Bomb when they wanted to hang out after their first class together and he rebuffed them, but I felt like this only helps Red’s case as a character. Sometimes, you’d rather go back to your place by yourself. He just met these two other freaks. Are they on a level of hanging out just yet? No, all Red knows about them is that they’re eccentric and really talkative. Why should he hangout with them? It’s not him being antisocial. He just wants to give it time because he barely knows them. I totally get it! Red may be angry, but he’s exactly how a lot of us are, and I loved him reacting normally to the animated, cookie-cutter world his peers try to push onto him. I don’t think he’s as much of a dick as they perceive him to be either. Some of these birds are just invasive and fake nice. Most human beings can tell when someone is being fake nice and since Red is well known and hated by the community, he can tell too. Because of this, he responds in kind to these characters that interact with him.

One random bird goes, “It’s nice to see you!”, and he immediately responds with, “I wish I could say the same”. It may sound like a mean-spirited response at first, but you have to consider the context and why he is the way he is.

His aggressiveness as a main character was very refreshing. Right from the opening, when he smashed a cake in the dude’s face and then broke a live egg in front of the bird’s family, I knew this movie wouldn’t be an ordinary one, and Red would be no ordinary hero. His nicer side exists, but he’s hesitant to show it because of his trust issues. His rougher exterior exists due to years of being bullied. Not to sound like a comic book supervillain, but society is to blame as to why Red became the bird he is. Now that what they have caused is in their face, they don’t want to admit they’re partially responsible. Since these birds don’t exist anywhere else or go anywhere, we have to assume Red’s bullies are now grown and interact with him every day, acting like everything is cool and they’re all happy. When considering this, it makes sense as to why Red doesn’t buy the bullshit from them. He knows they’re all fake. This is why he has some edge to him and how noticeable it is to everyone else. He’s the only one who has dealt with the disrespect and won’t take it.

His sarcasm knew no bounds too, and I found myself laughing at the simplest of lines coming from Red due to how well Jason Sudeikis’s voice acting, and comedic timing was. The role and what it called for suited him well, and his annoyance with his fellow peers and general problem with everything inconveniencing him was consistently amusing. He’s got a quip for everything like when a group of small hatchlings crossed the street and forced him to wait, prompting him to question if the mother ever thought about “bird control”. It’s humor like this that attracts the adult in me, as well as comments like “Pluck my life”. The edgy humor is sprinkled throughout this entertaining children’s animated feature, but it’s definitely one that would entertain adults who watch it with their kids. This is a guarantee.

When the pigs get into town, the story gets very interesting. For some reason, the naive birds all believe Leonard in that there is not a single other motive for his trek to Bird Island other than peace and wonder. This is where the wheels start to turn on Red winning us over even more. He’s the only one who questions anything further. Following his house being destroyed by this asshole and he gets nothing for it (it took him five years to build, and no one offers support? Fuck these birds!), he is rightfully skeptical on the suspiciousness of Leonard’s entrance to Bird Island. You have to be, right? Up until this point, the birds have never seen another animal (with the exception of that squirrel in the opening) but immediately trust anything this green pig is saying? How do you know they aren’t fugitives from their island ready to pillage and plunder? You don’t! The naivety of the birds starts to annoy you on a personal level, making Red the only reasonable character in the entire first half of the film. He’s the only one to point out how the pigs are destroying more of the “stuff we worked hard to build” while everyone else is “oohing” and “aahing” at whatever Leonard presents to them.

I’m not saying the birds should react like the humans did in The Day the Earth Stood Still, but skepticism is okay and understandable. Red questions them at every turn and points out real evidence, but Judge Peckinpah only yells at him for making Leonard and the pigs feel unwelcome. In a welcomed retort, Red responds by pointing out that he’s not asking basic questions. I found myself going, “Yeah! Tell his ass Red!”, especially when he asked how they are explorers if there are more pigs coming to the island on the daily. How does Peckinpah not get suspicious? Again, he blames it on Red’s fury, yelling, “Anger is not always the answer!”.

Yeah, well neither is happiness fuck boy.

The Angry Birds Movie can be looked at as a partial exploration into emotion. It’s not as in your face and in-depth as Inside Out is, but I still think it’s a reasonable take on the subject, showing us how getting your emotions out in the open is okay. Sometimes, you need to lash out and explain why you’re being wronged. You can’t always be happy or carefree. You have to acknowledge that not everything is sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes, life screws with you, and you need to fight back. This leads to a glorious moment to set up the third act where Red is validated by a remorseful town (“Red, we need a leader!”). Even leading up to it, he was still going to fight for his village despite how they treated him before, and when he yells at Bomb “Don’t give up! This isn’t over!” when they go after the stolen eggs, we see the hero that exists within the angry Red. Afterwards, when he’s proven right and he gets this validation from the town and Peckinpah, the feeling we get from the scene is majorly satisfying. Honestly, we want to fight alongside him like they do. Though the film as a whole may be a little more mean-spirited and violent compared to your typical Oscar-bait Disney movie, The Angry Birds Movie still gives us a great message while having an awesome amount of action, humor, and good-old fashioned cartoon violence.

Frankly, we’re all better for it.

By the way, I liked how they made sense of the green color of the pig’s skin. With the way it was presented, they seemed like alien invaders coming from a spaceship. Though this may not have been the explanation in the original game, this idea was a creative way of making sense of this stylistic choice.

I loved Mighty Eagle. Everything revolving around his characterization was hysterical, and the more we learn about him, the more we laugh. Peter Dinklage’s performance was top notch and right up there with Sudeikis as the best parts of the film. With his thunderous voice traveling miles, as well as his delirious, delusional, and unhinged personality that has completely unraveled following years of living by himself after retiring, the character and the moments revolving around him is one of the biggest positives coming from this wonderful sidetrack of the main story. The dynamic he has with Red, Chuck, and Bomb are perfection and set up the trajectory of the rest of the film incredibly well. Speaking of our beloved trio, they play very well off of Red’s not-wanting-to-hear-it attitude, and I loved watching their friendship blossom whether Red wanted it to or not. The other colorful characters inhabiting the island all have their moment to shine as well, including the ongoing gag of the one bird wanting a hug and the mime saying, “Oh my God” sporadically.

Also, a lot of credit goes to the action-packed third act. When the call to action happens, we are hyped. Red fired me up. I was ready to go to war! The invasion of Piggy Island in this movie was an even better representation of the gameplay than the game itself. It felt very World War II-inspired in its look, in certain beats and moments, its presentation, and its feel. I would not be surprised if whoever wrote this thing watched Where Eagles Dare or The Dirty Dozen or something before writing the third act. This isn’t a bad thing either. Whoever was behind this knew their stuff! As the characters go behind enemy lines, there was a real sense of danger and excitement, and Red looked like Captain fucking America fearlessly leading the charge into battle and going outnumbered directly into the castle of Nazi pig headquarters! It’s a phenomenal climax and feels like a World War II mission, complete with a bridge having to be blown up and planes looking like they came straight out the era (flown by the pigs). It’s pure chaos.

Without a doubt, The Angry Birds Movie is one of the best movies based on a video game ever. If we’re talking strictly about movies based on a gaming app for phones, this one is the best ever. Lovable characters, great voice performances, very funny, and action-packed, The Angry Birds Movie manages to find a way to not be an elongated commercial for a game made seven years prior. It’s just an all-around great movie.