Film review: The Angry Birds Movie is all the rage

The Angry Birds Movie channels some of the best things about the game – plus a moral or two.

From left, Chuck (Josh Gad), Red (Jason Sudeikis) and Bomb (Danny McBride) in Angry Birds. Courtesy Columbia Pictures and Rovio

The Angry Birds Movie

Director: Clay Kaytis,Fergal Reilly

Starring: Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage, Danny McBride

Three stars

I had very low expectations for this guaranteed cash-cow of a movie. After all, the makers of this film adaptation of Rovio Entertainment's wildly popular mobile game, Angry Birds, must have been only too aware that they could easily fowl it up (pun intended), appal critics and still have people flocking to cinemas.

After all, the games – in which a colony of inexplicably irate birds are used as slingshot missiles – have been downloaded more than three billion times. And everyone loves them, including my 64-year-old mother, who had never played video games in her life before Angry Birds came along. She is now an addict and take vicarious pleasure in beating my children at it. What other game can boast such a cross-section of players?

The movie version zooms in on Red, voiced by Jason Sudeikis (We're the Millers, Horrible Bosses), who is clearly at the bottom of the pecking order in an island community of fat, cuddly birds. Red is teased for his big bushy eyebrows and is overly prone to violent outbursts.

As punishment for a particularly bad outburst, Red is sent by the head bird to anger-management camp – "the free-rage chickens" – where he meets Bomb, voiced by Danny McBride (Your Highness, Pineapple Express), the black bird who tends to explode when angry, and Speedy Chuck, voiced by Josh Gad (Olaf in Frozen).

Then one day a ship arrives, full of friendly green creatures, but Red is the only one who suspects the dastardly plan these visitors are hatching – to steal all their eggs. So Red and his anger-management pals go on a quest to enlist the help of the Mighty Eagle, voiced by Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones, X-Men: Days of Future Past), who provides comic relief as a washed-up former superhero.

Things get serious when Red reveals their guests’ sinister intentions.

“We’re birds, we’re descended from dinosaurs. We’re not supposed to be nice,” Red yells at his compatriots in a rousing tirade.

Filmmakers have also tried to infuse a moral lesson into this tale – anger, apparently, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as those surges are channelled for the greater good.

As it turns out, when the birds on the island get angry, secret superhero powers are unleashed – such as shooting fireballs from their backsides or snot projectiles from their noses. These powers only reveal themselves when the birds catapult themselves at the enemies’ palace to rescue their eggs.

The entire concept is laughable, but it’s also inevitable, considering the filmmakers need to ensure the movie resembles the video game. The trade-off is that the storyline becomes farcical beyond belief.

In the mobile game, the birds function as missiles with funny traits and filmmakers have tried hard to bring these birds to life by giving them eccentric quirks, but, sadly, they remain one-­dimensional caricatures rather than fully developed characters.

Pulling off a commendable movie version of the game was always going to be a difficult task, no matter how good the graphics or the one-liners. In the end, it’s the target audience that really matters. And going by the two 6-year-olds – one of them my daughter – who watched the film with me, the ludicrousness of the plot seemed to have escaped them. My little girl even announced it was the best film she had ever seen. No doubt she will try hard to persuade me to cough up to unlock new features on the mobile game, while Rovio Entertainment feathers its nest with the profits.