BackFilm Review | Free Birds
A really stuffy Thanksgiving film
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The newest animated American holiday movie Free Birds, directed by Jimmy Hayward of Horton Hears a Who! (2008) fame, is like a last-minute dinner party. There’s a half-baked plot about time-travelling turkeys, Reggie and Jake (voiced by Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson, respectively), on their way to gatecrash the first American Thanksgiving celebrations. The sloppy birds are on a mission to get their species off the Turkey Day menu for good and like at any other reckless shindig, they simply order take-out to feed the revellers and save the day. In this case, it’s pizza from Chuck E. Cheese’s, as a blatant product placement for family fast-food chain.
As the first birdie of the US, Reggie slips into a cushy routine with unlimited pizza delivery and marathon runs of telenovelas at Camp David, the president’s country retreat. He begins to accept his solitary lifestyle and identifies himself with the hero of his favourite Spanish soap opera, El Solo Lobo or The Lone Wolf, until Jake, the absent-minded crusader of the Turkey Freedom Front, abducts him out of blue.
Within minutes, they break into a top-secret government facility and steal the egg-shaped S.T.E.V.E., a Space Time Exploration Vehicle Envoy—voiced by George Takei, best known as the cult helmsman Hikaru Sulu of the USS Enterprise on Star Trek. A too-long and too-tacky time-warp sequence transports the two odd ducks to Plymouth Colony, just three days before the inaugural Thanksgiving Day. Here, they meet their ancestors, all of whom resemble Native Americans with war paint, beaded jewellery and bizarrely enough, colourful feather headgear.
Free Birds released in theatres on Friday
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