Angry Birds doesn’t exactly soar like an eagle so much as flap like a pigeon – it can fly, but not gracefully.
For anyone who missed the wildly popular Angry Birds mobile game, it involved flinging various birds at poor pigs who had constructed stacks of wood to win eggs.
How this translates into a coherent film plot, I have no idea, but The Lego Movie had less to work with and that was brilliant, so I gave this a chance.
I wish I hadn’t.
Not because this film was a hateful piece of utter shite, but because it was so bland and uninteresting that I left the cinema feeling nothing. It left no impression. If this film was a colour it would be grey.
You see, despite basically being an advertisement for a game that stopped being popular over half a decade ago, there’s nothing nasty or overly cynical in Angry Birds so it’s difficult to outright hate it.
But there’s nothing to love here either. It just feels like another safe, by the numbers kid’s film that’s sure to entertain the under ten’s but will bore pretty much anyone else who watches it.
The jokes are mostly bland, boring and uninspired. You’d honestly laugh more watching an episode of EastEnders than this film, although that’s mostly because of Danny Dyer’s ‘acting’.
There’s even a couple of bizarre pop culture references for the adults here and there – or at least I think they were for adults, I’m sure there can’t be that many kids who’ve seen The Shining.
There’s also at least one joke in there that appears to reference paedophilia, but the less said about that the better, it was misjudged but not exactly horrifying.
Basically, it felt like a sub-par Dreamworks film like Shark Tale or any of the Ice Age sequels, and I can’t recommend it in the slightest. Maybe if you’ve got young kids this is worth a look, but otherwise, give this one a miss.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.