“Free Birds“ seems like it was a film made in a rush to cash in on the Thanksgiving season. The core idea was interesting, but in action the movie is bland and forgettable filler for a time of year generally forgotten in the word of animation.

Owen Wilson plays Reggie, a turkey who has been trying to warn his fellow turkeys that the only reason they live on the farm is to be eaten. The other turkeys eventually throw him out of their pen to what they assume is the farmer ready to take him away, when instead Reggie is deemed the national pardoned chicken by the president. Soon afterwards, he is taken back in time by Jake (Woody Harrelson) in a time machine voiced by George Takei to stop the first Thanksgiving from happening.

I am generally a fan of animated movies, but “Free Birds” did not do much for me. When they introduced the idea of time travel, I was looking forward to the possibilities that going through time would bring gags and jokes to the table. Instead, the movie brought a badly written script that really does not use time travel or its voice actors well enough to get many laughs.

I like Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson, but the two main characters could have been voiced by anyone and the movie would not have lost anything. Harrelson delivers a few lines well enough to get a few laughs, but Wilson generally comes off as grating and annoying. He shows he can do it well in “Cars“, so poor voice direction may be to blame. Amy Poehler does a good job as Jenny, the daughter of the leader of the turkey clan, but she is not given enough to help the film much.

On the technical side of things, the film looked good for Reel FX Studios first try, but the characters sometimes moved almost like the film was made in a slower frame than they ran the film. I did not see the film in 3-D, so that might fix this issue, but overall the film lacked general polish. The animation was colorful, but not anywhere near the polish of the average Pixar film or the better Dreamworks movies.

“Free Birds” was not terrible, but it did not bring enough original ideas or good storytelling to set it apart. There are some themes about the morality of eating meat, but set against the backdrop of unfunny jokes and lackluster characters, the message falls flat.

1/5