The Angry Birds Movie review: “Satisfactorily entertaining.”

The Angry Birds Movie review: The most popular smartphone game of all time heads towards the big screen.

Luke Ryan Baldock’s Angry Birds Movie review flies in. Read it below.

The Angry Birds Movie is based on the very popular touchscreen game that has been a hit since 2009. It’s colourful art, accessibility and simplicity made it a juggernaut with even the most casual of gamers. Just slide your finger to launch a bird in a slingshot and hopefully kill some evil egg-stealing pigs, while also racking up points for destruction. Over the years it has had spin-offs aplenty, including tie-ins with the Rio movies and Star Wars. Now it’s time for the eponymous birds to get their own shot at the big screen, and even though it may seem like a bit of a stretch to give them a whole feature (their cartoon shorts are very entertaining), we are living in a world where The Lego Movie was a surprise classic of both animation and comedy, so anything is possible.

The first challenge the film has is to establish characters. Different coloured birds are present in the game but are simply defined by their special ability. Here we have Red (Jason Sudeikis), a red bird with anger issues. His anger soon leads to court appointed sessions at anger management sessions. Already ostracised from the bird community in a self-appointed exile from the village, Red finds himself the only one suspicious of a group of pigs that arrive on the island. With fellow anger management attendees Chuck (Josh Gad) and Bomb (Danny McBride), and advice from the legendary Mighty Eagle (Peter Dinklage), Red must help execute a rescue operation when the island’s eggs go missing.

The tone of Angry Birds is kept, with delightfully anarchic humour and bright colours to be found everywhere. Red is a fun protagonist to watch, as his anger takes control but never explodes into terrifying and uncomfortable yelling. The film’s script eases us into the world of Angry Birds, by showing Red as one of the rare birds that is actually angry, but also detailing his anger rising from everyday situations. It is doubtful people will fail to sympathise with Red, which is a clever move as making him too angry would have alienated him and made him seem like the bad guy. Sudeikis’ voice is also perfectly suited to the role, finding the right balance between calmness and agitated sarcasm. Gad, McBride, and Dinklage are all fine in their roles, with a bizarre role for Sean Penn as the superlarge Terence, which sees him pretty much just grunt and sigh. Not in a bad way mind you.

The humour is what sells the film, with enough different types to appeal to all ages. There are racier and darker jokes that will see parents laughing, slapstick for the physical humour inclined, and also lots of silliness too. There are hits and misses all around, and there is a sad reliance on puns, so many puns. Puns are difficult to pull off, as usually the worse they are the funnier or they have to be very creative. Angry Birds has the most obvious puns you can imagine. Yes, there is a reference to Kevin Bacon…because pigs.

The Angry Birds Movie is a simple enough that knows its core audience, but also understands there will be parents stuck between the sprogs too. It builds up to a beautifully animated action finale that is a huge budgeted 3D transfer of the game and its mechanics. Unlike The Lego Movie though, it doesn’t completely commit, nor push the boundaries of average animated films. It still ends on an annoying song and dance number, which seem to be used constantly just to brainwash the kids into an uptempo mood no matter what they thought of the rest of the film. Angry Birds won’t be leaving anyone angry, but satisfactorily entertained.

The Angry Birds Movie review by Luke Ryan Baldock, May 2016.

The Angry Birds Movie is released in cinemas on 13th May.