Ninety avian minutes that mysteriously fly by
The Angry Birds Movie U Cert, 97min Dir Clay Kaytis, Fergal Reilly Cast Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Sean Penn, Keegan-Michael Key, Bill Hader
Downloaded on to everyone’s iPhones around 2010, hammered obsessively for around seven weeks, and then staunchly deleted to fend off sleep deprivation and malnourishment, Angry Birds was (rumour has it, is, still?) the definition of a time-guzzling smartphone app.
Whether we needed a film spawned from the accursed thing isn’t even debatable, but if The Angry Birds Movie manages one feat, it’s slingshotting over the low roof of your expectations.
Anyone passingly acquainted with this widget will spot the building blocks that Finnish developers Rovio have deployed for their spin-off. It has a fat black bird that explodes, a yellow one that goes fast, and a red one which isn’t good for much, except having whopping black eyebrows, anger management issues, and a curious vendetta against green pigs.
Somehow, around these concepts, an actual story has been concocted, involving an entire avian island that comes under threat when a seemingly friendly pig delegation arrives by boat.
The only suspicious bird is Red (Jason Sudeikis), because he’s suspicious of everything: he’s the quickest to throw a strop, and begins the film as a virtual outcast. So the first act is a comedy about anger and alienation; the second act sees the pigs, headed by the cunning Leonard (a campy Bill Hader) reveal their true agenda; and the third is pure mayhem, a demolition derby on the pigs’ home island to retrieve all the eggs they’ve evilly filched. This isn’t The Lego Movie – it doesn’t have that manic surfeit of inspiration – and it isn’t the first Rio, from which it borrows quite liberally in colour palette and design. But it’s a more than passable missing link between them, which sneaks as much pantomime innuendo as it realistically can into children’s entertainment. It’s well paced, and has just enough sincerity about its feathered society to keep you from sneaking glances at WhatsApp, or contemplating one of those face-swap things with the person beside you. Per the game, an hour and a half will fly by, and you’ll wonder how the blistering hell that happened.