The Angry Birds Movie

For F*** Magazine

THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE 

Director : Fergal Reilly, Clay Kaytis
Cast : Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader, Peter Dinklage, Kate McKinnon, Sean Penn, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Blake Shelton
Genre : Animation
Run Time : 97 mins
Opens : 26 May 2016
Rating : PG

Red feathers at morning, pigs take warning. In this animated comedy, we become acquainted with Red (Sudeikis), a resident of Bird Island who has trouble keeping his temper in check. After a particularly bad flare-up, Judge Peckinpah (Key) sentences Red to anger management classes. The classes are conducted by Matilda (Rudolph), and Red eventually befriends the jittery Chuck (Gad), Bomb (McBride), prone to literally exploding when he gets upset, and the gigantic, constantly growling Terence (Penn). Out of the blue, Bird Island receives visitors in the form of green pigs, led by Leonard (Hader). Claiming to be peaceful explorers, the newcomers are received with open arms by all of Bird Island’s residents – apart from Red, who harbours his suspicions. Red is proven right when it turns out that the pigs intend to steal and eat all of the birds’ eggs. Red, Chuck and Bomb seek the advice of the Mighty Eagle (Dinklage), a mythical hero whose glory days are far behind him. In retaliation, the denizens of Bird Island stage an attack on Piggy Island to rescue their unborn offspring.

            The Angry Birds Movie is an adaptation of the mobile game developed by Rovio, which became a cultural phenomenon around 5-6 years ago. Beyond the point that this might be flapping its way into theatres a tad late, there is another elephant bird in the room. Large swathes of the internet are convinced that the film is a thinly-veiled anti-immigration screed. It seems far-fetched that a kids’ movie based on a puzzle game might be politicised, but it’s not absurd on its face. The villains are insidious foreigners with a hidden agenda, their leader is sporting a curly beard, they arrive bearing gifts and the promise of peace, and our hero is the one guy who suspects all is not as it seems. Alternatively, it’s an anti-colonialist message, with the pigs as the conquistadors who have arrived to bamboozle the locals and make off with their resources. Naturally, the makers of the film won’t confirm or deny the hypotheses outright. It slingshots right over the heads of the young target audience, but it’s something to mull over – or just chuckle about – all the same.

            Past the possible political commentary, Angry Birds is very much a serviceable, run-of-the-mill animated comedy. There are reasonably well-known comic actors in the voice cast, cloyingly cutesy baby characters, getting-crap-past-the-radar jokes to make the adults snicker, and the inclusion of pop songs aplenty. The birds might be flightless, but a surprisingly high number of the jokes land. Amidst the more questionable gags, like a Fifty Shades of Grey reference and scatological humour, there’s a litany of groan-inducing puns – think “Kevin Bacon in Hamlet”, “Calvin Swine underwear” and “The Birds and the Bees Fertility Clinic”. Screenwriter Jon Vitti is a Simpsons alum who also penned the first two Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, so one kind of knows what to expect jokes-wise. There is a niggling sense that a lot of the jokes were cooked up by a writer’s room of stand-up comics roped in to do a last-minute punch-up. It’s also not terribly original: one scene borrows the “most annoying sound” joke from Dumb and Dumber, while another lifts the Quicksilver kitchen sequence from X-Men: Days of Future Past wholesale.

            Angry Birds may be markedly unsophisticated, but its protagonist does go a good way to making it work. Red is flawed, a bitterly anti-social loner whose deep-seated issues stem from a childhood of neglect (he was orphaned) and bullying. Sudeikis doesn’t phone it in and ends up being pretty engaging as Red, allowing the viewer to sympathise with his myriad frustrations. Gad essentially reprises Olaf from Frozen, while McBride is reasonably cuddly as the gentle giant who just can’t help his outbursts. Dinklage is an absolute hoot as the Mighty Eagle, a widely-admired Wizard of Oz type who turns out to be out of shape and comically ineffectual – wait, the Bald Eagle is the national bird of which country, again?

            Hader could stand to be a little – yes, we’re going there – hammier in his role as the big bad of the piece. Leonard and his fellow pigs want to consume unborn children – it would’ve been interesting to see the movie acknowledge just how dark this is. And hiring Oscar winner Penn to grunt and growl seems even more puzzling than having Vin Diesel’s only lines be “I am Groot”. Penn taped all his, uh, “dialogue” in one recording session and co-director Clay Kaytis openly admits it was stunt-casting. Apparently, the film’s executive producer David Maisel is a friend of Penn’s and reached out to him. Penn, enjoying an early cut of the film (and probably not wanting to pass up the incredibly easy pay cheque), signed on.

            Angry Birds is sufficiently colourful, fast-paced and funny, such that parents won’t be tearing out their hair - though it’s likely they won’t genuinely enjoy it. It is what it is, a franchise-ready animated movie made by committee, and it really could’ve turned out significantly worse.

Summary: It’s an animated movie as ordered via corporate mandate, but The Angry Birds Movie does pack in the jokes and some lively animation. Have meaningful post-movie discussions with your kids about the supposed anti-immigration sentiment in the movie at your own risk.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

The Gunman

For F*** Magazine

THE GUNMAN

Director : Pierre Morel

Cast : Sean Penn, Jasmine Trinca, Javier Bardem, Idris Elba, Peter Franzén, Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance

Genre : Action/Thriller

Run Time : 105 mins

Opens : 9 April 2015

Rating : NC-16 (Violence and Scene of Intimacy)

Middle-aged, grimacing, gun-toting heroes seem to be in vogue. Sean Penn probably looked at Liam Neeson’s recent output and went “hey, I can do that.” In this action thriller, Penn plays Jim Terrier, a former private military contractor hired by a mining corporation to assassinate the minister of mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo circa 2006. Also a part of the team were Felix (Bardem) and Cox (Rylance). Eight years later, Terrier believes he has escaped his former life, working for a non-government organization in the Congo, when his past comes calling, reopening old wounds. With the help of his old friend Stan (Winstone), Terrier tracks down his former partners to get to the bottom of things, trekking from the Congo to London to Barcelona to Gibraltar. In the meantime, he has caught the attention of Interpol agent Barnes (Elba). Caught in the crossfire is Annie (Trinca), Terrier’s ex-girlfriend whom he has never quite managed to forget.

            From beginning to end, The Gunman just feels like a wholly cynical exercise. First, there’s the matter of its name – the film is based on Jean-Patrick Manchette’s novel The Prone Gunman and that is a cooler, more distinctive title. We know we’re not supposed to let our personal attitudes towards actors’ off-screen personas colour our critique but here, it’s impossible not to think the only reason Sean Penn did this is because he smugly thought it was just that easy. This is Penn’s first action movie, and we can just picture him looking at Taken and saying “pfft, I can do that in my sleep”. He’s even hired the director of the first Taken film, Pierre Morel, to helm this project. Penn sports bulging biceps and looks to be in fighting fit shape, but somehow, he can’t quite pull it off, his physique coming off more like an ill-fitting suit than anything else. It appears that this particular archetype is a mite trickier to convincingly execute than Penn first thought – even for an Oscar-winner like himself.

            There is nothing special to the action here at all. With the bog-standard shootouts, fisticuffs and explosions, it’s a snooze for anyone who’s seen more than a couple of action flicks in their lifetime. The climactic confrontation takes place in a bull-fighting ring, which seems like a great setting for a unique set-piece, but the finale is still quite anticlimactic. It’s also difficult to take this self-styled gritty, contemplative action movie seriously thanks to the half-baked, sometimes hilarious dialogue. The screenplay, credited to Don MacPherson, Pete Travis and Penn himself, contains some jaw-dropping clunkers. For example, Idris Elba, who can usually make anything sound awesome, is given an unwieldy speech which begins with the line “ever have one of those days where every law is Murphy’s Law?” This then segues into an incredibly clumsy treehouse analogy, and ends with Elba quipping “get my drift, cowboy?”

            Likely thanks to its status as a vanity project, what looks on the surface like a top-shelf supporting cast plays second fiddle to Penn – big time. Elba gets the shortest shrift, his talents woefully underused here. Javier Bardem also isn’t in this for as much as the trailers imply, squeezing in a hammy performance before his time onscreen is up. Ray Winstone plays the same character he always does – the street-smart, wizened Brit tough guy, except here he’s “trustworthy ally” rather than “scary gangster’. Penn had apparently wanted to work with Mark Rylance so much he moved the shooting schedule around to accommodate him. The acclaimed stage and screen actor, who’ll next be seen in Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, does have fun with the limited material he’s given to work with. Jasmine Trinca’s Annie is a female lead of the most stereotypical sort – she works for an NGO, as antihero mercenaries’ girlfriends often do, and knows nothing about her ex-boyfriends dangerous past, needing to be rescued at every turn.

            The Gunman is neither entertainingly explosive enough to pass as escapist spectacle nor is it sufficiently cerebral and intense to be a dramatic action thriller. Our lead character could’ve been played by anyone really, but ironically enough, Penn with all his plaudits just can’t carry this action movie.

Summary: Sean Penn makes for an awkward action hero and the film wastes its supporting cast, The Gunman shooting mostly blanks.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

            

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

For F*** Magazine

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY

Director: Ben Stiller
Cast:         Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Shirley MacLaine, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn, Sean Penn, Patton Oswalt, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Comedy
Run Time: 114 mins
Opens: 25 December 2013
Rating: PG

This reviewer looked up a list of songs which contain the word “dream” in the title. We’ve got “Dream a Little Dream”, “All I Have to Do is Dream”, “California Dreamin’”, “Sweet Dreams are Made of This”, “Dream On”, “Daydream Believer”… it seems “dream” is probably just behind “love” on the “most-used words in song titles” chart. The science of dreaming is a fascinating and inexact one and many have become preoccupied with dream interpretation; dreams being associated with escapism and wish fulfilment. Ben Stiller takes on the role of daydream adventure king in this adaptation of James Thurber’s 1939 short story.

Ben Stiller plays the title character, a negative asset manager at Life Magazine. It’s his responsibility to process the photo negatives that will eventually make it into the magazine’s glossy pages, and life can get a little dull. So, he's given to flights of fancy every so often. In real life, he’s too timid to ask co-worker Cheryl Melhoff (Wiig) out, but in his daydreams, he gallantly rescues her dog from an explosion. Enigmatic photojournalist Sean O’Connell (Penn) has sent in his pièce de résistance to be put on the cover of the final physical issue of Life Magazine. Unfortunately, Walter discovers that the negative is lost, and with his mean new boss (Scott) chasing after him, he has to break out of the doldrums of his existence, embarking on a journey across exotic lands and going all carpe diem in search of the prized Negative #25.



In addition to playing the lead, Ben Stiller helms The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. This film is a change of pace from Stiller’s last two films as director, the manic, over-the-top and raucously funny Tropic Thunder and Zoolander. This is a film that purports itself as being more contemplative and more grown up, its title character embarking on a dramatic journey of self-discovery with nary a fat suit-clad Tom Cruise in sight. However, this is very much a conventional crowd-pleaser which barely nudges the mind, let alone provokes it. Beneath the fantastical imagery and the far-flung locales lies the hoary message of “follow your dreams”, addressed in a disappointingly superficial manner.

Yes, there is an appealing aesthetic to the film and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh has lensed some beautiful images of the lone figure of Walter traversing barren vistas, location filming in Iceland lending plenty of atmosphere. The film also captures the old-timey glamour and romanticism associated with the publication that is Life Magazine. However, it seems that Stiller’s sensitivities as a filmmaker are too commercial for him to truly embrace the weird and wonderful and he always has one foot firmly planted in formula. A film powered by whimsy, at no point does The Secret Life of Walter Mitty effectively sink its teeth into the consciousness of audiences, content to ply viewers with eye-catching sequences bereft of much substance.



Walter Mitty is yet another in a long line of “beleaguered everyman” characters Stiller has portrayed and he does have fun with the part, his most common screen persona meshing with the archetype of the Thurber protagonist. Even though he has fashioned the film as a less juvenile venture, glimpses of somewhat self-indulgent Stiller silliness are more than visible. There's a fantasy action sequence involving a Stretch Armstrong doll and an odd bit paying tribute to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that seems pretty out of place, even in a film about a daydreamer.

While this is clearly Stiller’s film to carry, he is backed up by an able supporting cast even if they don’t get a lot to do. Kristin Wiig’s Cheryl is sweet and approachable, emphasising Walter’s timidity in how hesitant he is to approach her. Wiig also performs an acoustic cover of David Bowie’s Space Oddity (possibly related to Bowie’s cameo as himself in Zoolander). Adam Scott does make for an effectively unlikeable corporate slime ball, the particular style of facial hair he sports enhancing the “jerk factor”. Sean Penn’s role is small but important to the plot and though this most likely wasn’t anything of a challenge for him, his presence does lend a smidgen of gravitas Stiller himself would be unable to provide.



The Secret Life of Walter Mitty sees Ben Stiller attempt to expand his horizons, the end result being a frothy globe-trotting adventure that is pretty to look at but nowhere near as deep as it would like to be. There are humorous moments that land and Stiller does affect a style that has shades of Michel Gondry, but the film can’t quite connect on an emotional level, the approach to telling the story creating too much of a distance with the audience.

SUMMARY: Conventional in the story it tells in spite of some inventive imagery, Walter Mitty’s isn’t a Life lived to its fullest.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Fair Game

FAIR GAME

2011

Starring: Naomi Watts, Sean Penn

Directed by: Doug Liman

Doug Liman redeems himself after Jumper, with a film about a very different husband-and-wife team from the titular couple of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Fair depicts the "Plame Affair”, when the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame was leaked by government elements to the press, and her husband former Ambassador Joseph Wilson labelled a fraud for challenging the "facts" as presented by the Bush Administration. The film is based on books that Wilson and Plame had written in the aftermath of the fiasco. 

The film is as much weighty political thriller as it is a biopic. Tension is very effectively generated, and the conversations never become mundane or sedate. The film's greatest strength is its uncompromisingly bleak authenticity, it's willingness to present everyday life at its frightening worst. 

Everyone loves a good underdog story, and Fair Game is centred on the "David" of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson and the "Goliath" of the Bush administration. I'm sure that the couple were made to unnecessarily endure a good deal of trauma, but sometimes it does get hard to buy the White House as the "big bad wolf", and only as that. However, credit is due for the decision to stay away from engineered melodrama and blatant shows of emotion. When Plame does have a breakdown, it feels real and heartwrenching.

This leads me on to a good part of why the film works as a political thriller with a documentary slant: the performances. Naomi Watts' portrayal of Plame is unflinchingly intense, and without much effort the actress shows Plames' struggles to balance being a wife, mother and CIA operative all at once, with the world bearing down on her for something that was not her fault. Sean Penn, who also starred alongside Watts in "21 Grams" and "The Assassination of Richard Nixon", is excellent as usual. It can be said that Joe Wilson is more "normal" than post Penn characters, but by no means less interesting. 

While Plame and Wilson are the focus of the film, it never feels like they hog the limelight. Liraz Chari portrays Dr Zahraa, used by the CIA to get access to her nuclear physicist brother, with a genuine frailness and justified caution. David Andrews is delectably - but never overtly - slimy as real-life Vice-Presidential advisor Scooter Libby. He is one of those villains you love to hate, and what makes his performance all the more scary is that this guy exists in real life.

Director Liman gets in the thick of it and shoots the dialogue scenes as if they were action sequences, which is a good way to pump up the suspense. It is to his credit that while most of the film consists of people talking, it is always riveting and never boring. After a while, his penchant for handheld closeup shots does border on the excessive, but it's never anything to worry about.

The movie globe-trots a fair bit, opening in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and hopping about Washington D.C., Niger, Egypt and Iraq. The locations are all pictured convincingly and never glamourised or exoticised. They function merely as backdrops for the plot to unfold, and it is rare that such movies don't veer into "scenery porn".  There is a great shot where a US Army helicopter scatters leaflets onto the ground – it’s poignant, effective and almost artistic. 

In the end, the film does make for a good, thought-provoking watch. It is nothing too intellectual and is still good entertainment, and Plame and Wilson should be proud that director Liman, stars Watts and Penn and the others involved in making "Fair Game" have done them much justice. However, it does get bogged down by its fist-shaking anger and political message. 

3.5/5 STARS 

Jedd Jong