Free Birds will hold you hostage with its questionable humour and bland narrative BY SUNDAR WAQAR
Directed by Jimmy Hayward, Free Birds, a Thanks-giving themed 3D animation makes for an unappetising meal this holiday. Slice through the turkey and characters and the jumps between the past and the future in the film will squirt all over the table. Indigestible, in one word. The plot pecks at the elaborate feasts of Thanksgiving celebrations. Turkey being the most commonly served bird during the holiday is the central theme of this new cartoon. The most intelligent turkey on the farm, Reggie (voiced by Owen Wilson), tries to warn his flock of the human appetite and their ultimate fate on the plate. The flock however firmly believes in a surreal turkey paradise, and cast Reggie out for his weird ideas. It is only when the president’s team visits the farm in search of a turkey, that the flock realises the truth behind Reggie’s concerns. Reggie is handed over to be sacrificed for the presidential dinner. But just as the audience begins to get worried, he is granted a presidential pardon on the insistence of the
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president’s noisy and chirpy daughter. From here the movie flies in a completely different direction and like birds migrating south during winter, it takes a dip. Reggie, along with the president and his daughter, is flown in a helicopter to Camp David where he luxuriates and is seen indulging in pizza. In those five very long minutes of pizza deliveries, you hope for a twist and crave a cheesy reward for sitting through the rest of the film. Finally Reggie’s gluttonous cheesy adventures come to an end in a not-so-thrilling way when another turkey, Jake (voiced by Woody Harrelson), kidnaps him for an assignment. Jake, an ambitious turkey forcibly recruits Reggie for a secret mission, commissioned by ‘The Great Turkey’ to travel back in time and wipe turkeys off the dreaded Thanksgiving menu. In a neither funny nor
gripping journey the two turkeys are transported in a giant, talking time-machine egg named S.T.E.V.E (Space and Time Exploration Vehicle Envoy), voiced by George Takei. Reggie and Jake travel back to Plymouth circa 1621, where they are caught in between hungry hunter dogs and gunshots. Saved by the turkey tribe, Reggie meets the turkey of his dreams, Jenny, a strong character who later becomes the chief of the tribe. Apart from some action scenes, the fights are predictable and offer nothing memorable. And you will have to sit through an impossibly bland and overstuffed narrative, if you want to find out whether the duo eventually succeeds in changing history. Free Birds, unlike other animations of its league such as Chicken Run, did not succeed in any significant way. The film was cluttered with ideas, lacked humour and the pace of action moved slowly. It was festive yet flavourless, colourful yet remindful of the idea of death and slaughter. In all, even by the standards of a children’s movie, the film was tasteless. Reviewers rating: 1.5/5 Sundar Waqar is a subeditor on The Express Tribune Magazine desk. She tweets @sundar_waqar