Free Birds (2013)

“Goodbyes are just hellos blowing across the wind until our paths intersect once again.” – Jake, Free Birds

Here’s a message to the Americans in the audience.  I don’t know how many there are, so this may not be going out to too many people.  There aren’t a whole lot of views each week when I put new posts up.  Anyway, happy Thanksgiving to all of you.  We here in Canada had our Thanksgiving last month, which meant we’ve had time to work off the feast before Christmas.  You guys aren’t so lucky.  You have just a month in between.  You’re still in a food coma when you get to the next holiday.  Yikes!

This week’s movie fits into the holiday theme.  It’s a movie about Thanksgiving.  It takes on a modern Thanksgiving, but also takes on the original American Thanksgiving.  It’s a movie about the food that people tend to eat during this time of year.  Specifically, it is about turkeys.  The movie is Free Birds.

You might be thinking, “But isn’t that a Lynyrd Skynyrd song?”  No.  Freebird is the song.  Free Birds is a 2013 animated film about Reggie (Owen Wilson), the presidential pardoned turkey, who went back in time with another turkey named Jake (Woody Harrelson) to stop turkeys from becoming the meal at the first Thanksgiving.  Along the way, they met a tribe of turkeys that teach them how to be more intelligent than the modern turkeys.  It was a fun animated comedy and I’m not sure why it was suggested in the first place.

What made Free Birds better than the reputation it has garnered?  There are a few reasons.  The jokes landing well was the most apparent point for it actually being good.  There was good voice work and a solid story to go along with it.  I’m going to start with the story, which will sound insane when I mention it, but actually ended up being fairly solid.

The Story

Free Birds was about Thanksgiving.  It began in a modern time, as Reggie lived on a turkey farm.  This was a place where turkeys were grown and slaughtered for food.  The turkeys weren’t smart enough to realize what was happening.  Except for Reggie, of course.  He knew what was happening and wanted the turkeys to plan an escape.

When the president arrived to find a turkey to pardon for that year’s Thanksgiving, his daughter chose Reggie.  This sent Reggie to Camp David, where he learned to live the good life.  He discovered television and pizza and became your stereotypical American.  It brought about some great comedic moments, including Reggie answering the door for the pizza guy and speaking in turkey speak because he’s a turkey.

One night, when Reggie zoned out, Jake kidnapped him.  He said there was a time machine somewhere around Camp David.  They needed to go back to the first Thanksgiving and stop turkeys from being on the menu.  Reggie tried to get back to his easy life, but ended up, through a series of unfortunate events, in the time machine.

The rest of the movie was spent with Reggie and Jake helping a tribe of turkeys survive an attack by the Pilgrims leading up to the first Thanksgiving.  Reggie fell in love, Jake learned his place in the world, and a few time travel tropes came into play.  There was one scene where four different versions of Reggie interacted.

It was a solid story about turkeys learning how to be better.  Reggie learned that a pampered life may not be the best.  He learned that taking in the world around him was better than isolating himself in front of a television.  It’s a great lesson for children, and one that seems to be getting passed over simply because people think the movie looks dumb.  Jake’s story was to never give up on your goals.  He wanted to save turkeys.  It looked like he wouldn’t be able to succeed because of all the obstacles that appeared.  With the help of the tribe and his new best friend Reggie, Jake accomplished his task.  He regained his confidence.  They were solid story arcs that could teach children a thing or two.

The Jokes

One of the most underrated styles of comedy is reactionary humour.  There aren’t a lot of people that can give a variety of great reactions that continue to get laughs.  Kenan Thompson is a great reactionary comedian, which may be why he has managed to stay on Saturday Night Live for so long.

Few animated films can capture the comedic reactions of real people.  Something about transitioning the emotions of a real person to their animated counterpart loses the reality.  Free Birds captured the reactions without them being simple double takes.  When the president’s daughter introduced the governmental staff, they reacted in horrified, worried, and shame-filled ways.  You could see those feelings in their faces and physical movements.  It worked better than some live action comedies.

Other jokes also helped to bring the movie above the bad reputation it has.  The aforementioned turkey answering the door for pizza bit was great.  There was also a strange dance scene in the middle of the movie between Jake and the turkey tribe’s equivalent to Jake.  It felt like it came out of nowhere, but it was one of the funniest moments, capped off with some chipmunks clapping at the end of the routine.

Free Birds delivered on laughs frequently, which is what you want out of a comedy.  It’s not a groan-inducing movie.  I smiled and had a good time throughout.  It never let off the comedy and was more successful than not.

Voice Work

Animated movies pride themselves on the people that they get to perform the characters’ voices.  Pixar tries to find the perfect person to portray the characters, whether it’s Tom Hanks as Woody, or Patton Oswalt as Remy.  Other animated movies create a voice cast of name actors based on stardom alone.

Free Birds fell into a weird middle territory.  It didn’t get huge stars who automatically sell movies.  Owen Wilson is known mostly for his collaborations with people like Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and Wes Anderson.  He’s not known for headlining his own movie (except for Drillbit Taylor). Having him be the star of an animated film was a different kind of role that you wouldn’t think could happen.  But it did.  His voice is a unique one that was interesting to listen to.

Then there was Woody Harrelson as Jake.  It was the sort of role he has played in live action.  He’s the dim-witted yet energetic and friendly best buddy character.  He had a similar character in Cheers, the show that made him a star.  He knows that kind of character inside and out.  But, even with the success of The Hunger Games and the franchise that followed it, Woody Harrelson isn’t a big enough star in the current cinematic landscape to sell a movie.

The rest of the cast was rounded out by Amy Poehler, Keith David, George Takei, Colm Meaney, and Dan Fogler.  None of them were bad.  Keith David and George Takei have done quite a bit of voice acting each.  Dan Fogler hasn’t gotten the credit he deserves for the comedic performances he gives.  Amy Poehler has a more well-known voice performance in last year’s Inside Out.  Many of them are able to fit into the world of Free Birds seamlessly, creating a great aural experience.

Maybe they were trying to stick to the “find the right voice” method when they were casting Free Birds.  For some reason, I don’t feel like they were.  They were casting based on stardom (hence the character posters), but couldn’t get big enough stars to call it a star-studded cast.  It was no Shark Tale, Madagascar, or Over the Hedge.  It’s more on par with something like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs where the cast is a solidly built cast of great performers, but they aren’t big enough to sell a movie on their own, and they weren’t chosen specifically because the character was perfect for them.  Though, you might argue that the characters were perfect for the actors in both movies.  At least, the actors made the most of the characters.

Free Birds has been wrongly categorized as bad.  Had I known that, I probably would have left it out of the schedule.  But it’s here.  I watched it.  I defended it.  Most of the people reading this will be thinking that I’m crazy.  What’s new?  I watch at least one bad movie every week because I have nothing better to do with my time.  Well, I used to have nothing better to do with my time.  I have stuff to do now but still put out these posts as a self-service and because about ten people read them.

Anyway, Free Birds isn’t as bad as people say.  It’s entertaining.  People need to stop saying that any movie that isn’t up to their standards of greatness is terrible.  Movies are not binary.  It isn’t great movie or terrible movie all the time.  There are movies in between.  There is a grey area.  Free Birds is in the grey area, though it leans toward the higher end.  It’s not terrible.  Stop acting like it is.  It’s perfectly fine, and might end up being a Thanksgiving classic.

These notes are anything but perfect:

• Free Birds was suggested by @mrjafri.
• Owen Wilson made a third appearance in the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Free Birds.  He had previously been in Anaconda and The Hero of Color City.
• Two actors from the Deuce Bigalow franchise worked on Free Birds.  Amy Poehler was in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, and Charles Ponce was in Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.
• Elisa Gabrielli from Beverly Hills Chihuahua was featured in Free Birds.
• Woody Harrelson had prominent roles in both Free Birds and Money Train.
• Finally, Keith David shared his voice in Free Birds.  He was recently introduced into the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Road House.
• Have you seen Free Birds? If so, do you like it or dislike it?  Why do so many people think this is a bad movie?  You can share your thoughts in the comments.
• What other movies do you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies?  You can let me know in the comments or on Twitter.  I’m always looking for new things to discover.
• Sometimes I share clips of the bad movies I watch on snapchat.  You can find me with the username jurassicgriffin.
• Next week is the fourth anniversary of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’m not sure if there will be a bonus post.  I may try and scare something up for next week.  Nothing new, but I might be able to find something on my computer.  Who knows?  For the anniversary, I held a tournament to determine what movie I should rewatch.  The votes have been counted.  It seems that I’ll be watching Jingle All the Way again.  Not the second one.  The first one.  It narrowly beat out Road House for the rewatch.  I’ll see you next week, when I’ve written something about the movie.

Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls (2004)

“Oh no. We think you should go.” – Mike Saunders, Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls

Many of the movies scheduled for the Sunday “Bad” Movies come from suggestions.  People recommend bad movies to should watch, and they get tossed into the lineup.  It brings a variety that only comes from having multiple inputs.  But then there are the movies that aren’t suggestions.  They come from the collections of bad movies found in discount bins.  They come from movies that pop up on Netflix, where they look like they would fit into this blog.  Sometimes movie choices are based on the name alone.  And then there are movies like Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls.  These movies are rewatches of bad movies.  Only, sometimes they get confused with other movies and the mistake is only realized halfway through the watch.

Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls was put into the lineup because I remembered watching it when I was younger.  But it wasn’t this movie that I was thinking about.  I was confusing Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls with another television movie from around the same time called Monster Island.  I don’t know how similar the two movies are.  I probably only got them mixed up because of how long it had been since I had seen them.  Either way, the movie that I meant to add into the schedule is not the movie that I added.

The television movie Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls wasn’t quite what the title described.  Yes, there was an island and there were girls.  But there was no specific Miss Castaway.  There were multiple beauty pageant contestants stranded on an island with pilots Maximus Powers (Eric Roberts) and Mike Saunders (Charlie Schlatter).  The movie parodied many popular properties of the time including Cast Away, Survivor, The Green Mile, and Planet of the Apes as the castaways tried to find a way back to the mainland.

This was not a good movie.  It felt like a Friedberg/Seltzer movie in how the humour was presented, except it didn’t have the budget that they somehow manage to get for each of their movies.  It didn’t go quite as far as a movie like The Starving Games, where it was a legitimate collection of pop culture references rather than actual jokes, but it did feel similar to something like Disaster Movie.  There was a story being told through the references, rather than the references completely steamrolling any sense of story progression.  It was still bad, but it wasn’t quite rock bottom.

Anyway, this post is going to entail describing the movie in some sort of detail.  It will happen through the different movie/television references that it featured.  This means that there will definitely be spoilers.  If you don’t want to be spoiled on Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls, a 2004 made-for-tv movie that you would have already seen if you wanted to, then go watch it before reading the rest of this post.  For those who don’t care or have seen this movie, continue on.

Survivor

The most apparent reference that Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls made was to the hit television show Survivor.  The show was huge around the time when the movie came out.  The timing couldn’t have been better.  The movie was released less than a week before the premiere of Survivor: All-Stars.  It was the perfect time to show the world their spoof if they wanted it to have any impact.

There are a few ways that the movie took on the Survivor material.  The castaways were split up into two groups, much like many seasons of Survivor have the contestants split into two tribes.  The tribes go to different sections of the island before merging together to become one big tribe, much like the later portions of any Survivor season.  The other big commonality was the inclusion of talking head segments.  The different castaways would talk into the camera about their experience on the island.  Did they get along with the others?  Were they having relationship problems?  How did they like the weather?  It was all discussed to the camera.  That is what made it the most like a reality show.

Cast Away

The title of the movie is Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls.  It only makes sense that the movie Cast Away, which was released four years prior, would be an influence.  The disaster that leads to being trapped on the island is a plane crash in both movies.  The main characters had to fight for survival on some unknown land.  Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls even went out of its way to have one character left by himself in the same way as Tom Hanks’s character in Cast Away.

The other similarity between the two was the use of FedEx.  Clearly, the rights to the name were obtained for Cast Away.  The movie never shied away from the fact that Tom Hanks was an employee of Federal Express before his island adventure.  His way of surviving was to use the packages that floated ashore as resources until he could sustain himself on the island.  Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls went a similar route with Mike Saunders.  When the tribes separated in a Survivor style way, he was left on his own.  Nobody had picked him.  He created a home in a cave and used packages from a crashed FedEx knock-off plane to survive.  It wasn’t anything high brow, but it was meant as a parody of the successful film.

Jurassic Park

There isn’t much to this side of the parodies present within Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls.  It’s a fairly simple, brainless parody.  A giant pig protected certain sections of the island from intruders.  The pig was called Jurassic Pork.  It looked sort of like a cross between a pig and a T-rex.  It also ate a couple people.  That’s about it.

Star Wars

What spoof/parody film is complete without referencing Star Wars?  The franchise has been one of the most profitable, influential, and enjoyed of the past forty years.  There wasn’t too much of a reference to the franchise outside of a robot that would project images of people for Mike Saunders.  It was similar to R2-D2 having the Obi-wan message from Leia.  Mike was the world’s only hope.  Michael Jackson and the Pope used the robot’s video projector to relay the message.

Planet of the Apes

This is where the spoilers kick in.  Early in the movie, it was established that the island held Noah’s Ark.  The giant boat was guarded by the Jurassic Pork.  The boat was important to the story because it provided a means of escape for the castaways who were still on the island.  The only problem was that they weren’t the only beings who wanted the boat.

There was a tribe of damn dirty apes who were also attempting to get their stinking paws on the boat.  They wanted to sail out to sea, creating a 40 day flood that would leave apes as the only animals left on the planet.  It was a hostile takeover by way of Noah’s Ark.  Not only did the castaways need to find a way off the island, they needed to stop the apes from taking over and creating a planet of the apes.

The Sixth Sense

One of the castaways mentioned early on that she could see dead people.  That line was reference enough, but the movie went beyond that and showed the dead people.  It didn’t have the same twist as the M. Night Shyamalan movie.  Nobody was secretly dead the whole time.  Instead, some famous dead people were depicted, including Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.  This side of the story was clearly shoved in with the sole purpose of making reference to The Sixth Sense without furthering the story.

The Green Mile

Much like The Sixth Sense, this was barely a part of the story, and ended up being much more of a reference for reference sake.  For whatever reason, Michael Clarke Duncan’s character from The Green Mile was on the plane with the pageant contestants.  He also showed up later in the movie to help in a strange tug-o-war battle.  There was no reason that this character needed to be in the movie.  There was no reason at all.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind

This was much more E.T. than Close Encounters, but I’m lumping them together because of the ending.  There was a dodo bird that ended up hanging around Mike Saunders.  It was like an E.T. character as it had been separated from its family in a strange new world.  You know, because dodos are extinct and this one was not.  The end of the movie saw a spaceship come to take the dodo home.  That’s like the end of E.T.  The thing that made me add Close Encounters into this reference was that many of the castaways got onto the ship with the dodos, much like Richard Dreyfuss got onto the ship at the end of Close Encounters.  I think the whole dodo thing was just a straight up Spielberg reference.

There were a lot of references littered throughout Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls.  Sometimes they were the story being told.  Cast Away, Survivor, and Planet of the Apes seemed like integral references to the story being told.  Without those references, the entire movie would have been different.  But then there were the other references like The Green Mile and The Sixth Sense that didn’t matter at all.  They were in the movie for the sake of being referenced.  There was no bigger reasoning.

This has been one of the worst weeks for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Though I think the jokes might be a little bit better than those in 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or on par with the movies that Friedberg/Seltzer put out, Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls doesn’t have the budget to make the visuals okay.  It looked cheap.  It felt cheap.  The humour was cheap.  It made the entire experience excruciating.  I’m glad that this week is now past and I can move onto next week’s Thanksgiving themed movie.

Now for some notes:

• I mentioned 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, so there’s the post for it.
• I also mentioned Friedberg/Seltzer, so here’s the post for Date Movie.
• Eric Roberts made his fifth Sunday “Bad” Movie appearance with Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls.  He has been in A Talking Cat!?!, Chicks Dig Gay Guys, The Human Centipede III, and DOA: Dead or Alive.
• Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls shared two cast members with Valentine’s Day.  They were Jennifer Amy and Kamilla Bjorlin.
• Chris Spinelli returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls, after being in 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
• Mike was played by Charlie Schlatter, who was also in the movie Ed.
• Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo had the first appearance of Gabrielle Tuite, who was also in Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls.
• P. David Miller made a return to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls.  Miller’s first appearance was in Metal Man.
• Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls saw the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Daniel Diaz, who was also in Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV.
• Finally, T.J. Storm is back in the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls.  Storm’s first appearance was in Mortal Kombat.
• Have you seen Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls?  Have you ever confused it with Monster Island even though it’s clearly not Monster Island?  Have you seen Monster Island?  You can discuss any of this or more in the comments section.
• Sometimes when I’m bored and watching bad movies, I share bits and pieces of them on Snapchat.  Add me there, under the username jurassicgriffin.
• Are there any movies you want me to watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies? Let me know in the comments or on my Twitter feed.  I’ll take them into consideration.
• Next week’s movie is going to be the Thanksgiving animated movie Free Birds.  I watched it last night and can say that I don’t find it bad at all.  I had a lot of fun watching it.  But it got suggested for this blog and I put it in, so I have to write about it.  We’ll see what comes out next week.