Angry Birds (2016)

(Video on Demand, October 2016) Surprisingly, maybe, there isn’t much to say about Angry Birds other than it’s a serviceable animated film for kids. That may be an achievement in itself—it’s an adaptation of a wildly popular videogame and those rarely lead to decent movies. But Angry Bird faithfully follows the current kids-animated-films playbook and if the result isn’t particularly memorable, it’s not terrible either. Bright and colourful, the universe of the film works as a foundation for the gags and while the story isn’t complex, it also serves its purpose. Notwithstanding some uncomfortable anti-immigrant plot threads (and it’s easy to be hypersensitive to those in 2016), this is mostly innocuous entertainment, enlivened by action sequences, musical numbers and various jokes. Fans of the game may or may not be disappointed to see that the big-screen version of Angry Birds doesn’t rely on the game mechanics all that much: Only one sequence re-creates the launching-birds idea and it happens to be one of the funniest of the film. Otherwise, the voice talent is fine, Rovio Animation doesn’t embarrass itself in its feature-film debut and Angry Birds is in the honest average for animated movies.