Review | The Angry Birds Movie 2 review: Awkwafina, Leslie Jones join fun and breezy animated sequel
- The Birds and Pigs are back, but this time they are united against a common enemy, Xeta, an evil bird of prey
- This sequel is littered with 1980s songs, plenty of visual gags, bright animation and very little subtlety
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3/5 stars
Credit where it’s due: making a film out of a mobile phone game is not easy. Particularly a game where birds are catapulted towards pigs to cause mayhem. Still, The Angry Birds Movie managed it in 2016, grossing US$352 million.
So now comes the sequel, a film that deliberately – and wisely – moves away from the confines of the game. As the poster tells us, “frenemies unite” as the Birds and the Pigs are forced to forge a truce when a new adversary comes on the horizon.
The nemesis in question is Zeta (voiced by Leslie Jones), a scheming purple-plumed bird of prey who lives in the icy confines of Eagle Island. Fed up of taking ice cold showers and walking her frozen-in-a-block-of-ice dog, Zeta has hatched a plan to take over the much warmer Bird Island and Pig Island and turn these hotspots into her own personal pleasure land. To help, she has a super weapon that blasts giant balls of ice towards her feathery and piggy foes.
Out to stop her is Red (Jason Sudeikis) and Leonard (Bill Hader), the rivals from the first film, accompanied by Red’s sidekicks Bomb (Danny McBride) and Chuck (Josh Gad), as well as the latter’s brainiac sister Silver (Rachel Bloom).
And what do they come up with? A lame bird costume, which they use to sneak into Zeta’s facility with the aim of disabling the super weapon. This comes into its own in a mildly bizarre sequence in a men’s toilet, where they’re trying to steal a key from a guard.
With the incoming Thurop Van Orman taking over directing duties from Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly, the animation is kept bright and breezy, recalling the pleasing simplicity of the video game. Van Orman, the Emmy-nominated creator of the kids’ cartoon series The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, also ensures the visual gags are layered on thick (one character is reading a copy of ‘Crazy Rich Avians’, a nod, perhaps, to its breakout star Awkwafina, who voices a character here).
Similarly, retro music cues – Hello, Axel F, All By Myself and I’m Too Sexy, among others – litter the film. As soundtracks go, it’s a little obvious – but then Angry Birds isn’t known for its subtlety. Hence the heavy-handed messaging about equality that runs through Bloom’s turn as smart cookie Silver.
