Tools of Construction 1.5: The Angry Birds Equation

Curse this fortuitous timing.

After a semiformal rundown of the problems of the “Ratchet and Clank” movie, “Tools of Construction” left off with the promise to delve further into the aspects of the franchise that may or may not have served it well in translation to the silver screen.

While this portion remains forthcoming, little did I account for the unanticipated circumstance of a video game movie perfectly encapsulating everything wrong with Hollywood’s stance on video games releasing a mere month after “Ratchet and Clank.”

While any writer worth their salt would fully dedicate to what must be done, I’ll spare you the detailed plot summary of a bird rallying his bird community to steal back their kidnapped eggs from an invading pig kingdom.

For those uninitiated, “Angry Birds” is more or less a game with almost no pretense of narrative premise. It’s a physics simulator in which you use certain tools to solve puzzles you can only interact with via prediction rather than direct control at all times.

It’s a puzzle game saved from being as aesthetically bland as Tetris by just happening to have a tropical bird themed skin, meaning that pretty much anything goes. And for the first 25 minutes or so, anything does.

“The Angry Birds Movie’s” initial focus as something of a domestic sitcom regarding characters with anger issues in a cartoon world falls flat on the humor but actually does get the gears of the mind working in terms of what could have conceptually made for a decent hour and 20 minute long feature.

Sadly, the pigs make their entry after the first half hour and from that point onward, things shift gears from a harmless and mildly diverting children’s cartoon, to an obnoxious, loud, frantic, smorgasbord of sensory overload culminating in a contrived set-up that makes the 2012 board game based “Battleship” look like a creative masterpiece by comparison, so boring in its plotting, execution, and follow-through, I found myself thinking it may have actually been more fun to watch a live recorded game of “Angry Birds” projected onto the screen instead.

“The Angry Birds Movie” is shallow, stupid, mildly irritating and overall mediocre at best and nobody with a working sense of reason should be shocked to hear this of a film adaptation of a story lacking puzzle game in the slightest.

However, what makes it worth focus in regard to getting at the problems of “Ratchet and Clank” are what went into it.

The content of the first third of the movie, focusing on different types of anger and its unhealthy effects expressed by different types of people and the sources that it all stems from aren’t just slightly engaging on an intellectual level but could actually lend themselves well to a fun framework for character interaction.

Each of the attributes of the different birds in gameplay seem to be assigned some sort of meaning that narratively ties into their anger disorders; Bomb literally explodes when not balanced, Red’s sarcasm laden outbursts of rage centering him as a standard everyman, Chuck’s speed and metabolism feeding into a sense of chronic impatience, etc.

The characterization is all set up and can even feed into some unique and exaggerated visuals for a variety of situations that can provide light commentary on something relatable; think of something akin to a more thematically driven version of Animaniacs.

What we ultimately get however, is all of this set up thrown out the window in favor of an uninvolving set piece that people loosely associate with fun, that ruins what little merit there may have been to the entire cinematic experience.

Keep this thought in mind, whence we revisit this topic next.