Today I'll be reviewing a movie of Historic proportions: Free Birds.
Image Credit to IMDb
WARNING: Spoilers ahead!
Have any of you ever watched the TV show of Mad, based on Mad Magazine? Did you ever see their Thanksgiving episode? The one where they parodied 'The Bourne Legacy'? Well, that's this movie's plot. The story follows an outcast turkey named Reggie. He gets pardoned by the President during the annual Turkey Pardoning. He lives a luxurious life, until he's kidnapped by another Turkey named Jack. Jack believes that his destiny is to steal a time machine (built by the US Government, of course), and use it to go back in time and stop turkeys from being on the menu of the first Thanksgiving. There, Jack and Reggie meet a tribe of wild turkeys, who are constantly hiding from a hunter, named Myles Standish, and his hunting crew.
I'm gonna focus on the acting right now, then rant later. The voice acting is, well, really kinda okay. There's nothing really special about it. Owen Wilson plays Reggie, and he does his best fulfilling a stupid script like this one, though I guess that can be said for all of the actors. Woody Harrelson plays Jake. This film also employs the voices of Amy Poehler as Jenny, Reggie's love interest, Colm Meany as Myles Standish, and George Takei as S.T.E.V.E., the time machine's AI. These three are probably the best of the the voice actors in this film.
Now, this is a really stupid movie. It has all the clichés of comedy/action/kids films, but not in the way where it is clever and mocking (like Johnny English, where it's mocking them beautifully). There's a lot of non-funny non sequitur, like guards laughing for a minute at a mildly funny joke, and countless other kinds of pointless, throwaway lines. There are a couple of funny moments, and those make the movie more tolerable, I suppose. But then there's the Pizza. In the end, (SPOILERS), there's a big battle between the humans and the turkeys. Reggie comes back from the future, and brings along... Pizza. So, instead of humans eating turkey for Thanksgiving, they eat Pizza. Now, not only is this stupid, but it creates a paradox, which I won't go into, because this movie doesn't deserve that level of thought. Then the very last is spoken. It's from S.T.E.V.E. (who is voiced by Takei). His last line is "Oh, my!" A stupid, cheesy (yet funny), way to end this stupid film.
I would recommend against anyone watching this movie. While there are certainly amusing moments, when it's all said and done, it's a horrible mess. I think that it's definitely a kid's film, and children (the film's target audience) will most likely enjoy it, since they are blissfully unaware of the clichés. Also, drunk people (NOT the film's target audience) might enjoy it as well. In other words, don't watch it.
This is the Teenage Critic, signing off!
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