BEFORE: Happy Thanksgiving! We left the city and drove further out to Long Island for a buffet lunch at a mansion in a town called Glen Cove, we tried it out last year and all the food was great, so we came back with better buffet strategies to try to make the most of it. For me that meant getting a plate full of shrimp from the cold seafood bar, and making sure to get both white AND dark meat turkey, and this time saving room for all the pies - apple, pumpkin and pecan. The cakes I had no need for, this holiday is really all about the pies, am I right?
This is the time when we all think about what we're thankful for - and we just got power restored to our home office, it had been out since Election Day when my wife plugged in a space heater. We didn't have time to get it fixed because we were leaving for a week in North Carolina, so when we got back she had an electrician look at our wiring to figure out what went wrong, and their proposed fix was to re-wire the whole room, without breaking into the walls, which meant creating new molding to hide the new wires, and the price tag came to a few thousand bucks. Too rich for my blood, I just don't have that kind of money set aside for home repairs right now. She wanted to dip into our savings, but I suggested getting a second opinion from an electrician that she trusts, and she knows a guy who used to work for her company. He was able to find the real problem, which was a short in an outlet in the room that holds my comic books, and as soon as he turned off that outlet, the power in the office came back on. It was a cheap fix that the other electrician couldn't find, and was willing to charge four figures to work around.
So sure, I'm thankful for my wife and what we have together, I'm thankful for family in N.C. and I'm thankful that I'm overworked and not under-employed, but also I'm thankful for honest, capable electricians and second opinions. I'm thankful that the outlet never caused a spark that would ignite my very flammable comic-book collection, and I'm thankful that we don't have to pay a large repair bill for one faulty outlet. And I"m thankful that the power's back on in my office and I don't have to run a long extension cord to turn my computer on. That's a lot to be thankful for.
Woody Harrelson carries over from "Champions".
THE PLOT: A pair of turkeys discover a time machine and decide to use it to travel to the first Thanksgiving, to take turkeys off the menu forever.
AFTER: Well, I'm not really thankful for confusing, pointless animated films that are aimed at kids and don't make much sense. Damn, and I usually like time-travel movies, too, but no matter which angle I look at this film from, it just disappoints me. I made it through an hour of this film last night and then fell asleep, and damn, but it was difficult today after the big Thanksgiving lunch to turn it back on, figure out the last thing I remember and finish the damn movie.
This just feels like a bad idea, and in the movie business, bad ideas usually get killed at the development stage, or MAYBE somebody can step in and change them around and turn them into a good idea, or a passable idea, but it feels like that just didn't happen here. Somebody somewhere said, "Hey, let's make a movie about time-traveling turkeys, going back to the first Thanksgiving and fighting Pilgrims" and then somebody else said, "Wow, that's a great idea!" instead of properly saying, "Umm, what else can we do instead?" I just don't get how anyone could sign off on this, it doesn't work as a story, it's not funny, and I don't even see how any young kids would enjoy this. It doesn't resemble any reality we know, so, umm, how does this even happen? Can we get someone to show their work here, and explain how they felt this was a good idea?
OK, so the turkeys are going to talk. Can the humans understand them? No? OK, fine, so the turkeys can only talk to each other, but then, umm, how? And how do they understand so much about human culture, like how to open doors and how to launch pumpkins with catapults and the big one, how to operate a time machine? There are massive fundamental issues here that just get ignored in favor of telling a story, in a sense it's like "Godzilla vs. Kong" that just throws all science and reason and logic to the side to tell a story about giant apes living in the center of the Earth. Sure, I get it, reality is boring and fantasy is exciting, and that's the age we live in where something doesn't have to be true to tip the scales in an election, it just has to be said often and loudly to turn public opinion. I live in a nation of dumb people who don't know how to research something or fact-check.
Case in point - our best historians and scholars tell us that turkey was NOT eaten at the first Thanksgiving, so there goes the whole premise of this movie, out the window. Instead they ate venison, seafood, corn, beans, squash, nuts and fruits, and sure, "wildfowl". And who knows, maybe that included turkey, but it wasn't like flipping a switch, like nobody had ever eaten turkeys before, and then suddenly when they wanted to celebrate their harvest they suddenly realized how delicious turkey legs were and they proclaimed that from now on, every November everybody would suddenly have an appetite for turkey breasts. Things just aren't that simple. So even if turkeys could talk, even if those talking turkeys could time travel, and even if they could sabotage that first Thanksgiving feast to get turkeys off the table, it's just as likely that the tradition would come back by developing over time. It's like pointing out that if you could travel back in time and kill baby Hitler, you wouldn't necessarily change anything, because all you'd really do is create a power vacuum in Germany in 1936 that another aspiring dictator-type would fill.
But still, OK, let's follow the thought through, it still doesn't work because of the paradox involved in time travel. Reggie the turkey travels back in time and stops that Thanksgiving feast in 1621, and in doing that, he changes the timeline - creating a new reality where turkeys are NOT held in captivity and bred and grown to have enormous breasts and thick, chunky legs. Mission accomplished, only it's the Reggie FROM that timeline where his whole species is slaughtered who did that, and now the situation that created that Reggie is no longer a problem, so now Reggie DOES NOT travel back in time and fix things, because they don't need to be fixed. So he did it, but then he didn't do it. Paradox. He just created a time loop where the problem is fixed, then not fixed, then fixed, then not.
I admire the sentiment here, and the attempt to show kids that there's a better way of doing things, and maybe there are a few caring vegetarian kids out there, but then there are probably better ways to entertain those kids than by throwing time-travel into the mix. Instead of pointing out how bad meat is for you, which those kids CAN understand, the solution here is to create a world of talking time-traveling turkeys who all deserve to live and roam free and not be slaughtered by humans. That doesn't really track either, because there wouldn't BE so many turkeys alive if humans didn't farm them and breed them and fatten them up. Same goes for cows and chickens and pigs, if you could snap your fingers and turn 90% of Americans into vegans or vegetarians, the market for cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys would almost disappear, and there would be no need for all those animals to even be born. Am I crazy about the fact that humans enslave entire species of animals and eat them? Of course not, but what's the alternative? I'm not in any position to change Americans' desire to eat meat, that's not my purpose, but it would be a better way to go about things. I may not support that cause directly, but activists have every right to try to convince people there's a better way to eat. What most Americans will not respond to, however, is other people telling them what to do.
Some other things that fundamentally don't work here - the fact that America has secret time-machine technology, and a very Bill Clinton-like President is just starting to figure out what to do with it is one thing. The jump-off for the story here is the annual tradition of the President "pardoning" a turkey, which someone recently pointed out is also a flawed process, because tha turkey didn't do anything wrong, so the term "pardoning" shouldn't even apply. But sure, it's a fun P.R. opportunity every year - now I once believed that it was completely meaningless, and that the pardoned turkey from each year would probably be consumed the following year, but it turns out they're serious about this, the pardoned turkeys get to go live on a farm or petting zoo in Virginia or Minnesota, and they get to live out the rest of their natural life-span.
"Free Birds" depicts Reggie, the pardoned turkey, as getting to go live with the President, which is, umm, just not how this process works. Yes, he's got a young daughter here, and she tries to keep the turkey as a pet, but again, very unrealistic. Does he live in the White House or at Camp David or something? And he somehow figures out how to watch TV and order pizzas? Seriously, WTF? I guess that's the dream life for a pardoned turkey? And what's up with the President's daughter? She just falls asleep at random times, and it feels like the screenwriter just didn't know what to do with her, or was unable to come up with dialogue for her. OK, let's make her narcoleptic, that will solve all of our problems with her character.
Also, what does it say about Reggie's character, when he was on a crusade to convince all of his fellow turkeys that they were going to be slaughtered, like he was going to lead the Great Turkey Rebellion or something and take down the humans, but then as soon as he got pardoned by the President, screw all of that "change society" crap and just take it easy, right? How am I supposed to like a self-serving main character like that? But Reggie's dream life gets spoiled when Jake, a bigger, stronger turkey, kidnaps him and says that he needs his help to save all turkeys, everywhere, by traveling back in time. Jeez, it's just some weird twisted version of "The Terminator", only for turkeys. The Turk-inator?
Once these two turkeys team up, it's a lot like "BIll & Ted's Excellent Adventure", at least in some ways. Near the ending is one of those "Hey, don't forget to leave the keys!" moments, which I saw coming like a mile away. "The Great Turkey" is the entity who first appeared to Jake and gave him the time-travel mission in the first place, and it's not too hard to figure out the real identity of the Great Turkey.
It's also a bit confusing that the turkeys from 1621 are depicted in the style of Native Americans - that's a weird bit of cultural appropriation, at the very least. Other things are just not explained at all, like why are some turkeys colored red and other ones are blue? Different breeds? Evolution? Not sure. And why are the turkey chicks different colors, like pink and yellow and blue? Nothing here really makes any sense at all. Are turkeys smart or dumb? Sometimes they're smart here and sometimes they're dumb, there's no consistency. Overall this isn't funny, it's not cute, and it doesn't really get to the heart of the problem, which is that the American tradition of celebrating the harvest means that another species gets slaughtered as a result. I agree that maybe one day we can do better, but the current solutions like tofurkey just aren't going to get us there. This movie is very much like tofurkey.
I wish I could fit in "Inside Out 2" with Amy Poehler or "Fly Me to the Moon" with Woody Harrelson here, but there are only 12 movie slots left this year, and I know how i need to fill them. I've reached the part of Movie Year 16 where all of the choices I've made since January are really driving the bus, it's just too late to pick any different roads right now.
Also starring the voices of Owen Wilson (last seen in "Paint"), Amy Poehler (last seen in "Moxie"), George Takei (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Colm Meaney (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Keith David (last seen in "Transporter 2"), Dan Fogler (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Jimmy Hayward (last seen in "Jonah Hex"), Kaitlyn Maher, Carlos Alazraqui (last heard in "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe"), Jeff Biancalana, Danny Carey (last seen in "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage"), Carlos Ponce (last seen in "Blue Beetle"), Robert Beltran (last seen in "Eating Raoul"), Lesley Nicol (last seen in "Ghostbusters" (2016)), Jason Finazzo, Scott Mosier (last seen in "Clerks III"), Lauren Bowles (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Dwight Howard.
RATING: 3 out of 10 Spanish soap opera episodes
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