It's time for another My Take!
Today, I'm doing Free Birds.
Vincent: (pops out of no where) REALLY??
Me: Vincent, what do you want?
Vincent: I live here now, remember? That picture you saw?
Me: Oh yeah. (eye roll)
Me: Leave me be, Vinny. I don't trust you.
Vincent: What for?
Me: You might screw something up.
Vincent: I'll be good. (golden halo appears above his head and smiles) I promise.
Me: (sighs) Fine. But you have to sit on the couch while I do this.
Vincent: OKAY! :D (dive bombs the couch and starts eating popcorn.)
Let's do this.
Free Birds: This is actually the first animated feature to be created by RealEffects.
Before this, they made tons of shorts and theme park rides based off of other big cartoons and movies.
Like Looney Toons, Ice Age, The Simpsons and even Despicable Me.
So, do we think that they are ready to play with the big boys by making their own movie or should we just go back in time and try to get this off the menu?
Let's find out!
The Story: Now off bat, we already know that this idea is a ridicules.
I mean, we are talking about time-traveling turkeys that want to take out Thankgiving.
Try saying that five-times fast.
But after that, you can see that there is no other plot for the movie other than the ThanksGiving plot.
That can be a bit confusing since the movie seems to be confused about a plot and a goal.
A goal is something that gives the characters meaning to do something.
A plot are thing that the characters will do in order to complete that goal.
Of course they do do things to help with the goal but they are completely unrelated to the goal itself.
It's literally filled with a bunch of useless gags and a pointless romance plot between Reggy and Genny.
But the worst part is the ending which can almost ruin the entire film.
I'm not gonna spoil anything for you about the ending-
Vincent: AWWWWW! >:(
Me: Quiet you.
But let's just say that time traveling turkeys aren't the stupidest thing in this flick.
However, there are a few points I will have to give them.
There were times when the humor caught me off guard and it was actually funny.
Yeah, it's mostly done in Looney Toon slapstick and some aren't even funny, but it does help us cope with this film's ridicules nature.
They know their concept is stupid, so they embrace it!
The thing that I did like was how the turkeys lived in the 17th century.
It seems interesting to see that they lived underground as a native tribe.
Other than that, there are some other things happening in the story, but they don't seem to form anything or have any purpose.
The Animation: The only thing that I will say about the animation is that it's cheap and generic.
I'll be honest, the plants in the movie look really fake and nothing looks alive or colorful.
Then there are times when the tones of the characters are really bland and just dead looking.
The Characters: It's a little weird describing the characters.
They're actually pretty well written.
But it wasn't executed as well.
Let's start off with Reggy who is a turkey who wants to find his place.
It's really cool to see how he resolves this by either being alone or being with Genny but that's about it.
The rest of the time, it just feels like he's there to just help with the mission.
Same thing can be said about Jake.
He can be this really cool and developed character and even has a backstory to why he wants to stop ThanksGiving.
But the rest of the time he just tries to compete with Ranger to see who has the biggest balls around.
Vincent: Heheh, a-round balls. Heheh....
Me: Zip it.
There's Genny who's more of a love-interest for Reggy.
But she does show that she can be more than that by being a strong member of her tribe and as the daughter of the chief.
Then there's Mild Standish, the man who goes around hunting wild turkeys for his hungry town in a really cool bountyhunter style.
Not really intimedating but still has a threatening nature and you know that there will be trouble when he is on screen.
Not the best bady I've seen but still cool enough to pass.
I can't say that any of these characters are bad.
They're just not handled well.
I should have known that this movie was gonna be dumb just by it's title.
I could honestly see where this film could have been a great comedy, but Free Birds is just a poorly executed where even though it can give out some good laughs, it doesn't make up for it's empty story, weak animation, bad use of good characters, and a horrible ending.
Vincent: (leans in) Is it that bad??
Me: Oh yeah.
If I have to make a recommendation for this, I would just use this as background music for when you have people at your place for ThanksGiving.
Story: 4/10
Animation: 3/10
Characters: 6/10
Free Birds: 4/10
Well, that's all for this post, folks!
If you want to see more, you know where to look!
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