Free Birds – yes, the animated film about Thanksgiving turkeys. It’s hard to find a way to make this holiday the center of an animated film. Free Birds gives it a good try though.
Owen Wilson is Reggie, a turkey aware of the fact that that Thanksgiving means death. This ostracizes him from the flock that simply refuses to see the facts. Then he becomes the annual pardoned turkey and lives at Camp David. There he discovers television and pizza.
Woody Harrelson plays Jake, a turkey that has more intelligence than the typical farm bird and recruits an unwilling Reggie to go back in time and change history so that all turkeys are safe during Thanksgiving.
Scot Mosier is typecast as the pizza delivery dude while George Takei is the voice of the time machine’s navigation system. Other talent includes Dan Folger, Robert Beltran, Colm Meaney, and Amy Pohler. Everybody does a good job and the animation is decent. It’s the plot, however, that falls a bit short. While there is a disclaimer about how Free Birds is not meant to be taken as historically accurate, there is a very glaring plot hole that bothered me. Arriving 3 days before Thanksgiving the colony is near starvation and hoping to make friends with the natives to figure out a way to feed everybody. This is so bad and historically inaccurate that it is laughable, and not in a good way.
Getting pas that horrible plot hole there’s enough jokes to keep things amusing for a viewing. While I don’t see this as something my own kids will want to keep watching year in and year out, your own mileage may vary. There are enough jokes for both kids and adults and while it’s not going to be the laugh riot it thinks it is there were enough chuckles elicited on my part to recommend the film as a rental.
Special features on the Blu-ray include a few featurettes, a couple of promo spots and a horribly organized menu.
Oh, and it’s definitely “PG” due to on-screen death and violence. Kindergarten and up.