How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 13 November 2013
This article is a review of FREE BIRDS.
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“I’m a flock of one,” Reggie (Owen Wilson)
Let us put this out there: An animated film about time travelling turkeys was always going to struggle on the quality meter. It might though have had a nutty entertainment value in the right hands. There is urbanity to our entry into the world of the condemned; a free-range farm has Reggie in initial narration observe, “I’m not going to dress it up, turkeys are dumb.” Ostracised and self-aware, the rest of his cohorts are blissfully ignorant of their imminent demise in time for Thanksgiving. Happenstance allows Reggie to be saved by the President’s daughter demanding her father pardon him. She has the habit of delivering awkward home truths to his staff and then suddenly passing out tired.
Let us put this out there: An animated film about time travelling turkeys was always going to struggle on the quality meter. It might though have had a nutty entertainment value in the right hands. There is urbanity to our entry into the world of the condemned; a free-range farm has Reggie in initial narration observe, “I’m not going to dress it up, turkeys are dumb.” Ostracised and self-aware, the rest of his cohorts are blissfully ignorant of their imminent demise in time for Thanksgiving. Happenstance allows Reggie to be saved by the President’s daughter demanding her father pardon him. She has the habit of delivering awkward home truths to his staff and then suddenly passing out tired.
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At Camp David, the Presidential retreat (with an anachronistically sounding Clinton-esque commander-in-chief), Reggie lives the life of Riley, ordering pizzas while watching Mexican soap operas. Woody Harrelson’s Jake ruins his idyll. By the way, humans can’t understand them, just hearing the typical gobble-gobble sound. Jake forcibly recruits Reggie to his T.F.F. (Turkey Freedom Front), to carry out a mission that is the former’s destiny: To go back in time to the first Thanksgiving to get their species off the menu. So an ambitious concept, and different from the plethora of cartoons on the silver screen. Wilson exchanges his goofy enthusiastic persona for the surfer reluctant one. He has two settings it seems. Harrelson goes for his CHEERS naivety mixed in with a focused strength. The animation is passable, looking substandard when you compare to the likes of contemporaries: MONSTERS UNIVERSITY and THE WIND RISES.
You might be wondering how Reggie and Jake are to move through time. Camp David sits on top a secret facility. The duo manages to break in and engage the machine. They move through time similarly to Jodie Foster moving through space in CONTACT. Director Robert Zemeckis’ BACK TO THE FUTURE also gets a riff later on. The time capsule is called S.T.E.V.E. (voiced by Sulu a.k.a. George Takei). It’s now November 1621, three days before the first Thanksgiving, and the Plymouth colonists are going hungry. Why the tight deadline to alter history? It’s a cartoon, let’s give the nonsensicalness a pass shall we? Jake and Reggie immediately come into the crosshairs of some nefarious hunters, only to be rescued by a resourceful turkey flock that has built an underground lair. I kid you not. There is some romantic chemistry between the leader’s daughter Jenny (Amy Poehler) and Reggie. Thankfully no bird love is consummated on camera. The audience is then delivered a lesson in teamwork to survive.
Some decent gags can’t make up for a half-baked animation. Potential not capitalised upon. However, one did wonder whether the mission in FREE BIRDS would succeed, and at what cost, which is refreshing.
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