I previewed the movie with my family last week and we all thought it was great fun!
The movie takes us to an island populated entirely by happy, flightless birds – or almost entirely. In this paradise, Red (Jason Sudeikis, We’re the Millers, Horrible Bosses), a bird with a temper problem, speedy Chuck (Josh Gad in his first animated role since Frozen), and the volatile Bomb (Danny McBride, This is the End, Eastbound and Down) have always been outsiders. But when the island is visited by mysterious green piggies, it’s up to these unlikely outcasts to figure out what the pigs are up to.
Featuring a hilarious, all-star voice cast that includes Bill Hader (Trainwreck, Inside Out), Maya Rudolph (Bridesmaids, Sisters), and Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), as well as Kate McKinnon (Saturday Night Live, Ghostbusters), Keegan-Michael Key (Key & Peele), Tony Hale (Veep, Arrested Development), Tituss Burgess (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Ike Barinholtz (Neighbors, Sisters), Hannibal Buress (Daddy’s Home, Broad City), Jillian Bell (22 Jump Street), and Danielle Brooks (Orange is the New Black).
We find out Red was bullied as a child, and from there always seemed to have a run of bad luck. I felt bad for him! His anger comes from the bad luck of his life, but one day he goes too far and is forced into Anger Management classes. There we meet some of the other angry birds, and hilarity ensues. And that is also how we meet our heroes and heroine, for when the pigs come to the birds island, Red’s mistrust eventually helps the birds to discover the pigs real reason for being so friendly, and together they hatch a plan to win the day.
The message of the movie is, do not let go of all your anger! You may one day need it! That is how it works for me in my real life!
Turns out I met a few of these birds a few weeks back, now I get to share what they had to say!
Josh Gad plays Chuck. Chuck is a little hyper active and has speed issues, he moves too fast! My first question for Josh was, how did he make his voice distinctively different from his Olaf voice, the one he is most commonly associated with. Josh said that he based his character on a friend who was a “motor mouth.” In the movie, Chuck always talks very fast. The speed at which Josh’s character talks did successfully help Chuck’s voice to be distinctive. And Chuck the speed demon is one of the funniest characters in the movie!
We also got a peek into Josh’s backstory. Performing roles did not come fast enough for him after college, so he called his mom and said he was going to follow in his brother’s footsteps and go to law school. His mom told him not to give up so fast. His mom gave the perfect advice!
In the movie Chuck has some battle cries that he has to come up with, and when I asked, Josh told us he was able to let loose and do whatever he wanted to try to come up with those. He was very successful in this improv!
Maya Rudolph plays Matilda. Matilda was once an angry bird, and now she is the leader of the Anger Management classes. She described her character as a “yoga instructor on steroids.” She was fabulous. And she came up with the anger she needed when the pig assault happened!
I have been a huge fan of Miss Rudolph’s since I first saw her on SNL years ago. She was thrilled to be sitting with the parent bloggers, as was Josh, we are a much easier round table to participate in then the hard core journalists! Maya shared about how growing up she was always performing around the house, etc. When she realized she could get paid for it, she gravitated towards the theater and again, the rest is history.
And then we got to talk to Red, Jason Sudelkis! He was thrilled to have been asked to be in the movie! He shared that there was quite a lot of improv on the set (or rather, in the sound booth), and that caused multiple takes, but the comedy that came out of it is terrific. There were times when there were many months between takes, as happens in animated movies, and it was not too difficult to come back into character after this hiatus.
These folks also shared that none of them worked together as part of this process. Not once. That is how good the editing is. At most, one of the directors is there to act with, but otherwise, these folks are all alone in a sound booth, never working with each other. I will always be fascinated by that!
These interviews were part of a roundtable session after an evening where we had viewed some scenes with producer, John Cohen. He shared how the movie was first conceived in 2012. He said that things were already defined about what people loved in the hugely successful Angry Birds game, plus there was so much undefined that it left a lot of room for creativity. They focused on a core group of characters and did share that the possibilities were endless about what could come down the road!
At the evening viewing Mr. Cohen also shared the resume of many of the folks that worked on this movie, it included people who worked on every major animated hit of the last decade. That blew me away, and you will see how all of their expertise ended up making this a visually stunning movie with a great sense of humor as we root for a cast of flightless birds fighting for their families:
Disclosure: My family received tickets to preview the movie. All opinions are always 100% honest and my own.
Already making plans to see this movie but thanks for the reminder.