THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE 2

DIRECTOR Thurop Van Orman

CAST Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Leslie Jones, Bill Hader, Rachel Bloom

PLOT The war of pranks between Bird Island and Piggy Island is raging. Yet when a third ice-capped island threatens the safety of both, pig king Leonard (Hader) suggests a truce so Red (Sudeikis), Bomb (McBride), Chuck (Gad) and Silver (Bloom) join a mission to nullify the danger.

IF JUDD APATOW were creating a live-action ensemble dramedy about life and love and muddling through, he could do a lot worse than purloin the cast of The Angry Birds Movie 2: Jason Sudeikis, Danny McBride, Josh Gad, Leslie Jones, Bill Hader, Rachel Bloom, Tiffany Haddish, Peter Dinklage, Awkwafina, Sterling K. Brown, Maya Rudolph (plus a cameo by Nicki Minaj). Instead this stellar collection of talents is being put to use in the sequel to a 2016 original inspired by a popular app where you catapult birds to flatten green pigs. Still, untethered from the shackles of its gamebased origins, new creative team Thurop Van Orman and John Rice’s film is a more enjoyable affair, still lacking the storytelling craft of a Pixar or a Laika, but delivering gaudy, hit-and-miss fun. Aptly enough for a film about flightless birds, it doesn’t get off to a flying start. After a frenetic pre-credits sequence that throws a lot of gags at the screen and sees what sticks (answer: not a lot), a simple set-up emerges. Both Bird and Piggy Island are under attack from Eagle Island, led by purple bird Zeta (Leslie Jones on lively form) who uses a volcano-type super-weapon to lob ice bombs at the avian and porcine communities. Her simple, admirable plan is to use the two islands as a summer vacation escape from her glacial surroundings. King pig Leonard (Hader) suggests a truce to Red (Sudeikis), the hero of the first film, who is reluctant to accept: if there is no war, he can no longer be a hero and will lose his new-found popularity. But seeing a chance to earn glory again, he agrees to team up with the Pigs. For the most part, this is heavy weather stuff: Red and his buddies Bomb (McBride) and Chuck (Gad) are not the most winning protagonists, the set-pieces, like a speed dating sequence, fall flat, and a battle of wills between Red and sparky super-smart science geek Silver (Bloom) is predictable.

Things pick up immeasurably when The Angry Birds Movie 2 transforms into a Birds-And-Pigs-On-

A-Mission movie, as a motley crew try to infiltrate Zeta’s island and disable the super-weapon. Here we get an assemble-the-team sequence, a mission briefing, a peculiar scene of opera singing in a submarine, Garry the gadget guru (Sterling K. Brown) and lots of Ethan Hunt-styled dangling. Running alongside the main plot is a sub strand involving three hatchlings baby angry birds knowingly voiced by the children of Nicole Kidman, Viola Davis and Gal Gadot who have to recapture three eggs that have floated out to sea it takes in a huge whale, a journey to the stars and a fearsome snake. It eventually and perhaps too conveniently crashes into the main plot, but it has the quality of a good self-contained short, taking an absurd idea and having fun with it.

Unlike the first film’s dubious-for-a-kids’ film messaging be wary of foreign strangers; it’s okay to get angry sometimes the second film stays on safer ground, deconstructing gung-ho macho heroics (Red comes to agree Silver is the brains of the outfit) and persuasively arguing things are always better when we work together. And in these turbulent times, who can disagree with that.

IAN FREER

Verdict

Moving beyond the confines of the app’s premises, The Angry Birds Movie 2 starts slow but flourishes into breezy, colourful fun.