As Halloween comes to a close, the holidays finally turn their head, ready to embrace children with the joy of the season – at least, children who aren’t taken to see “Free Birds,” the animated debut feature by Reel FX, hoping to stuff some Thanksgiving into the hectic end-of-the-year movie schedule.
Owen Wilson, one of the many Hollywood voices adjunctly thrown into the film’s foray toward attention-grabbing antics, provides the voice for Reggie, a scrawny turkey paranoid abouthuman traditions in late November. In the process of attempting to warn his turkey brethren about their upcoming doom, he is taken by the president of the United States to be the pardoned turkey, set to live a life of luxury at Camp David for the holidays.
His peace is disturbed, however, by Jake (Woody Harrelson), an equally paranoid turkey, and the sole member of his own liberation front, who has a plan to change everything. Together with Reggie, he plans to infiltrate a top-secret government lab, use the government’s time machine to go back to the first Thanksgiving and stop turkey from ever being served for dinner.
“Free Birds” relies on making itself as outlandish as possible while still keeping the attention of kids and their ideally vegetarian-influenced parents. It fails, not too surprisingly, at getting its message across successfully, any thematically driven purpose the movie aims for falling behind in a flurry of feathered silliness.
What is amusing about “Free Birds”, at the very least, is the willingness of its cast to, on infrequent occasion, get some laughs going in between scenes of pilgrim chaos. Jenny (Amy Poehler), Reggie’s love interest from the past, provides humor as an odd subject of amusement, perfectly appropriate for Poehler. Coupled with Harrelson and George Takei, voicing the time machine S.T.E.V.E., the voice cast makes the best of what limited opportunities they receive.
“Free Birds,” with its troupe of overly confident, anthropomorphic cartoon turkeys, takes clear inspiration from animal-starring animated comedies of the past. As Reggie and Jake attempt to save their kind with human trickery and sabotage, a “Looney Tunes” feeling shines through the film’s cleanly rendered characters, albeit without anything remotely similar to the skill of a Chuck Jones script.
The easiest comparison to make, perhaps, is to 2000 claymation hit “Chicken Run,” a movie so similar in nature that it automatically sets the bar for this film’s aspiring standards. “Chicken Run” was able to make a barnyard buddy comedy film fun for the whole family with essentially the same pieces, but in a far more coherent manner.
By the time Reggie and Jake prepare for battle with European settlers, set to hold back an army of colonists for the benefit of all future turkeys, the humor is far gone. As creative as the writers of “Free Birds” aspire to be, mixing science fiction with historical holiday eccentricity, they run the limits of animated ridiculousness into the ground intolerably early, an accomplishment within itself.
– Sebastian Torrelio