User blog:Tecku/Off Subject: Angry Birds Trailer

Hey guys! A few months ago, I posted a Tecku Talks page in response to the PvZ movie announcement. During the post, I made numerous allusions to the announcement of the Angry Birds Movie. Now that the trailer for the Angry Birds Movie, I thought I'd give my two cents on it. And boy.... was I underwhelmed. There was some good and some bad, but it was mostly mediocre.

First, let me say this: the trailer does not make the movie. A terrible trailer may disguise a great movie, or vice versa. Remember the trailer for Fant4stic? Yeah. However, keep in mind that the trailer should do its best to get me invested in the movie. Literally. My ticket pays for the movie, so the advertisers should do their best to get my money. Let's break the trailer down:

Animation and Sound
Let me start by saying this: the animation is beautiful. It's colorful, vibrant, smooth, and just brings a whole element and fondness to each scene. The character models are also great. To make the characters work on the big screen, they chose to add legs and adjust body portotions- which I think was a good choice. It keeps true to the general theme behind each character, while making the needed changes.

As for sound, well, all the trailer let us hear was liscensed songs for the soundtrack, so I can't exactly judge anything besides the voice acting. How is the voice acting? Kind of hit n' miss. Leonard's voice is pretty good, and I can maybe give Bomb and Chuck a free pass, but Red's voice is just awful. To be fair, he only says two lines in the trailer, but neither of them matched the character nor the scene.

Also, I saw Peter Dinklage in the credits. How the heck did they get Peter Dinklage? I know he's done some bad roles recently with Destiny and Pixels, but how on earth did they convicnce him to do this?

Story
One of the biggest, most important things a trailer can do is give an inside look to the story's premise without spoiling anything about the ending. And let me be clear: I have no idea what Angry Birds is about. Oh, I know what the game is about. Pigs steal bird eggs, birds wreck pig stuff up. Everybody knows what the game is about. But what is the movie's premise? To me, it looks the main plot of the movie is going to be about the birds at anger management class.

We only see one scene with the pigs, and that's their introduction. Is the main movie going to be about fighting with them over the eggs? Or are they going to take a backseat to the anger management until the last 1/3rd of the flick? I honestly don't know, and that's not good. The trailer seems so concerned with showing us comedy that it forgets to outline its basic premise. Speaking of which.....

Comedy
Now, here's the thing about this movie. It seems to have some good slapstick ideas, but none of them ever really hit home. now, normally this would be okay, but here (and in the Angry Birds game), almost all of the comedy comes from the slapstick. Apart from a single joke about phrase "the early bird gets the worm" (which wasn't that funny either), every joke was slapstick based. Now to show why I think these jokes could have been better, I'm going to go over them.

Joke: "Hey Red, how are ya?" "Oh, I'm horrible!"

Why The Joke Fails: The delivery on Red's line falls flat on its face. It doesn't know what emotion to use, so it uses a mix and fails.

What I Would Do: Red should either be grumpy passive aggresive sarcastic, or fully chipper high-pitched squeely chipper. The former is funny because it points out how obvisous Red's mood is. The latter is funny because Red is making fun of the worm salesman's chipper attitude. Make sure to exaggerate the emotion on Red's face to match.

Joke: Red is walking to anger management when he passes an obnouxious sign. He gets annoyed by it, and it looks like he's going to lose his temper, but he doesn't (yet).

Why The Joke Fails: There is no reason for Red to stop and get annoyed by the sign. If he doesn't like the sign, he would naturally just keep walking.

What I Would Do: Red walks by the sign when the anger management instructor walks up to greet him. She puts him in a long handshake (or wingshake), and strikes up a long conversation/welcome. Red is now trapped by the handshake, as is getting annoyed by both the instructor and the sign. We alter between zoom in's on Red face, the instructor's mouth, and the sign as Red gets more and more annoyed. Just when it looks like Red is going to lose it, the instructor ends the conversation.

Joke: Partway through Leonard's intro, his minion experience technical trouble with the ramp.

Why The Joke Fails: It's been done before. This doesn't automatically kill the joke, but there's no variation whatsoever.

What I Would Do: Mix it up. Have the ramp stop a few steps away from the beach. Leonard gives an annoyed look to his minion, but adjusts by walking down the last few steps. However, just before he step onto the beach, the ramp starts reversing. Leonard puts on a nervous grin and tries to outspeed the machine while still talking, but eventually trips and is thrust backwards into the ship's hold.

All in all, the jokes made it up to bat, but they rarely got past first base for me. If they did for you, fine. But for me, I think I'll hold onto my money. If it gets really good reviews, I'll give it a chance, but I'm skeptical.