MOVIE REVIEWS: FREE BIRDS

The pun is obvious: Free Birds, the animated family film about turkeys, is a turkey. That’s virtually the unanimous assessment of the major critics. The story about turkeys trying to take back Thanksgiving is “inane, and the execution is manic and unoriginal,” writes Miriam Bale in the New York Times. Similarly Peter Hartlaub in the San Francisco Chronicle comments that the movie “is the kind of factory-churned animated movie that seems to be multiplying in recent years. It sounds fun and clever in theory. … In execution, the film is all sidekicks and sight gags, with little story cohesion or purpose.” And when was the last time you read a comment like this about a film aimed at kids: “A seasonally pegged 3D cartoon bore that sets the bar so low, it could give a slug a concussion.” Those are the words of Linda Barnard in the Toronto Star. Clearly Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News must feel that her fellow critics have overreacted, because she simply sums up: “It’s no masterpiece, but if you’re hoping for a family film that will keep everyone reasonably entertained, this will fly.”