Free Birds Review (2013) – A film that will leave you bored, and uncomfortable but they got a star studded cast!
Thanksgiving is here! As I have said before, this is a holiday that has questionable and painful origins, but despite that, it is still celebrated here in the United States every year. We all know that Turkey is the main dish on Thanksgiving! In honor of that and while doing our best to stay in theme, we have forced ourselves to watch a film called Free Birds.
We have really struggled to find the words to describe this film. It is truly a mess of a movie that has a few brief moments that are amusing…but is overall extremely cringe. It has a star studded cast which we found to be extremely odd…they must have been paid A LOT to be in this film. We struggled through the viewings and definitely found that it was a million times more enjoyable while playing the drinking game we developed for the movie.
We highly recommend that if you are going to watch this, that you play the drinking game along with it. Obviously we here think drinking games are very fun and we enjoy the process of developing them, testing them, and ensuring that while they are fun they are still safe. This is why we recommend taking “sips”, as opposed to taking “shots”, “glugs”, or finishing your drink.
At the same time though, we do not think drinking games should be NECESSARY in order to enjoy a movie! They should just add to the fun of it…unfortunately for this film…we really found that the drinking game was necessary to get through it and to actually enjoy any of it… Consider yourself warned!
We do want to give a heads up here and say that this movie may be triggering for some. It includes cultural appropriation which was difficult to stomach.
We will do everything we can to not give too many spoilers in this review but there is likely to be some, so please take that into consideration and read cautiously.
This film begins with our main character Reggie, (Owen Wilson), a farm raised turkey, realizing that turkeys are the main course in the typical Thanksgiving meal and this is why the farmer fattens them up with corn. Reggie is, of course, extremely upset by this and attempts to warn his fellow turkeys.
His flock does not believe him or heed Reggie’s warnings as they are apparently too dumb and Reggie is the only turkey that has more going on between his ears…which is something we found very questionable throughout the movie, but that is what they would like us to think so, moving on!
A fellow turkey within Reggie’s flock realizes that Reggie is correct and declares that the farmer is on the way to select a turkey to eat. The flock decides that because they do not like Reggie, they are going to sacrifice him by pushing him out of the coop first.
Instead of being eaten Reggie is declared the “Pardoned Turkey” by the President of the United States! This completely changes Reggie’s lifestyle as now he finds himself in the lap of luxury with all of the cheese pizza he could eat.
We should make a quick note here to let you guys know that there is a lot of shameless sponsorship plugging throughout the whole film. It is really blunt and tasteless but it makes a fun addition to our drinking game! So there’s that!
Reggie is living it up at Camp David, eating pizza constantly and watching a telenovela that he has become a bit obsessed with. He’s just enjoying himself…until he gets kidnapped and recruited by a larger turkey named Jake, (Woody Harrelson). Jake is looking for a way to go back into the past and get turkey’s removed from the Thanksgiving menu!
We thought that this was pretty funny. Even if we no longer ate turkey for the Thanksgiving meal…this would not mean that turkeys would not still be farmed and eaten in a more general sense. But that is neither here nor there!
Reggie wants nothing to do with this mission, but gets dragged along by Jake. Jake believes that getting turkeys off of the Thanksgiving menu is his destiny, given to him by “The Great Turkey.”
Reggie and Jake find a time machine secreted underground below Camp David. They hop in and are taken back in time to the very first Thanksgiving by S.T.E.V.E., (the time machine), voiced by George Takei…which was, again…a bit perplexing. STEVE is funnier than most of the rest of the cast of the film, so maybe that was the appeal?
They are taken to the past where they bump into some wild turkeys being hunted by humans. The wild turkeys are made to look as if they are Native Americans, which was very jarring, and extremely cringe-worthy. It has been a while since a film made me cringe this much.
This is also where Reggie meets his love interest, a female turkey named Jenny (Amy Poehler) and her brother Ranger, (Jimmy Hayward). The wild turkeys take them to their hideout and introduce the characters around.
We have some very awkward scenes between Reggie and Jenny. As well as some interesting ones between Jake and Ranger. Jake and Ranger have more chemistry in this movie, than Reggie and Jenny do! Not sure if this was done on purpose or to what purpose, but it was noticeable and kind of funny and cute.
Jake and Ranger were probably the best parts of this entire movie. Their antics were funny and almost oddly sweet. We enjoyed them, but Reggie and Jenny…fell so flat, awkward, and not very believable.
The humans in the colony are frustrated and angry. They are hungry and want to eat turkey specifically! For some reason…it HAS to be turkey, and we cannot possibly hunt anything else! It is also pretty funny because it is a lot more likely that the pilgrims ate deer or elk, something along those lines because turkeys are not easy to hunt…along with the fact that a wild, undomesticated turkey is not going to feed that many people.
A deer could feed way more people…but this is not even suggested or discussed! It MUST be turkey because the bad guy Myles Standish, (Colm Meaney), feels some kind of way about them! Standish is very angry that they keep getting away from him, tripping his traps, and are just all around defying him! At least that is what we think must be the case as he never discloses his particular reasoning behind his hatred beyond frustration with their skills at not getting caught.
It might have been funnier if there was a tragic backstory for Standish involving turkeys, but this is not a very well developed film at all, and is honestly not that funny, so we press on!
Reggie and Jake attempt to encourage the wild turkeys to take up their cause of getting turkeys off the menu for the Thanksgiving meal, but they refuse.
That is the wild turkeys choice, but Jake and Reggie’s mission is still the same! Get turkey removed from the Thanksgiving meal! They also want to help the wild turkeys so they come up with a plan that they think is a win-win.
They are going to blow up the humans weapons! Of course, the humans can just make more weapons, we are unfortunately very adept at that as a species, but they are turkeys! So, the turkeys move forward with their plan, blow up some of the weapons, and run back to the wild turkeys thinking that everything is wonderful! Except for the fact that Jake decided to bring back Standish’s horn that is filled with gun powder…which left a trail for the humans to follow right back to the wild turkey hide out.
Chaos ensues as the humans destroy their hide out and catches a bunch of turkeys. Humiliated and ashamed Reggie runs home via STEVE.
Jake and the turkeys that remain decide to take up arms and fight. Reggie goes back to his own time, only to meet up with himself and makes some discoveries about his part in all of this and how he can fix it all!
The last of the movie is just as ridiculous as the entirety of it but not necessarily in a good way. More shameless sponsorship plugs…We were relieved when it was finally over, and also very weary.
If you have seen and loved this film, you are 100% entitled to your opinion, but we are not exaggerating when we say that this film was a slog for us to get through. There were brief moments that we found entertaining and somewhat funny, but overall this movie fell flat for us.
If you are someone who loves movies that have no point, cringe, bad jokes, an oddly boring, yet chaotic storyline with a lot of odd details, and behaviors that do not make any sense; or maybe you just want a bad film to play a drinking game to and make a lot of fun of, then this is the movie for you!
We hope that this review gives you some insight into this film…and again we cannot stress enough that our drinking game was tested THOROUGHLY and made the movie far more palatable.
We give this movie…1 glass of holiday grog out of 5! (You’re going to need all the alcohol you can get to make it through this film!)
Free Birds Drinking Game
Take a sip anytime:
1. Anyone says “Thanksgiving”
2. Anyone says "The Great Turkey"
3. Anyone says "Reggie"
4. Anyone says "Jake"
5. Anyone says “Pardoned turkey”
6. STEVE says something snarky
7. Jake says or does something dumb
8. Jake and Ranger flex their muscles or have chemistry
9. Jenny's eye rolls or droops
10. You hear turkey’s gobbling
11. A joke falls flat or makes you cringe
12. Sponsorship logos (Old Navy, Chuck E. Cheese, etc.)
13. Anytime you see the cultural appropriation of Native Americans
What did you think?? Did you like the movie? Did you hate it!? Do you have suggestions for films we should consider?! Let us know here in the comments and always remember to be safe and drink responsibly!