Free Birds is the new animated movie from Reel FX Creative Studios and is directed by Jimmy Hayward who made Horton Hears a Who! It tells the story of Reggie, who finds himself the pardoned turkey by the President of the United States for Thanksgiving. While living the high life that this entails, he meets Jake who has been sent on a quest to go back to the past to stop turkeys being on the menu for the traditional Thanksgiving feast. Sounds exciting, right? The pair manage to steal an experimental time machine from the government and go back to 1621 to the Plymouth colony and find themselves in the middle of a fight for survival amongst the local turkey clan.

It might be a great movie for vegetarian parents to bring their children to, but the depiction of 17th Century turkeys dressed as native Americans and the human settlers as blood thirsty blaggards might be seen as borderline offensive. It’s hard to see what this movie has to offer a European audience that do not celebrate Thanksgiving and certainly my companions to the cinema screening of Free Birds, Mina age 2.5 and Edie aged 3.5, were mildly bored after the initial 40 minutes. This could have been a great little short feature for the cartoon network as a celebration of the season. Over the Halloween period shorts from Toy Story and Monsters V’s Aliens were very popular and hit the right note. It seems to be hard to find an animated movie made purely in 2D these days and I have found that younger viewers don’t necessarily like wearing their glasses for the full 90 minutes, but Free Birds made the best of 3D technology particularly in the time machine sequences. Free Birds is not a complete turkey, it might amuse young children who particularly like movies with talking animals but it is low on gags for the adults.

Release date 27th November

Directed by Jimmy Hayward

Written by Jimmy Hayward/Scott Mosier

Voice actors: Woody Harrelson, Owen Wilson, Amy Poehler