Video game adaptations have become a mainstream cultural force, with the recent major box office successes of movies like A Minecraft Movie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie helping them move from niche and oftentimes critically panned films to massively successful and popular hits. Hollywood isn’t showing any sign of dropping the ball soon, and as fans await everything from Return to Silent Hill to Mortal Kombat 2 in the works, Paramount+ just added an animated movie that brought a massively popular mobile game franchise to the big screen in the 2010s.
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Paramount+ is now the streaming home of The Angry Birds Movie, Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly’s 2016 animated film based on the Angry Birds video game series. The movie is set on an island of anthropomorphic flightless birds, where Red, a grumpy outcast sentenced to anger management class, attempts to put a stop to a newly arrived crew of pigs. The movie started streaming on Paramount+ on December 1st, but its sequel, The Angry Birds 2, which is considered one of the best video game movie adaptations of all time, didn’t come with it.
The Angry Birds Movie Is a Great Video Game Adaptation, but It’s Far From a Critical Masterpiece
Video game movie adaptations have historically had a bad reputation for mishandling source material and just being downright bad, but The Angry Birds Movie managed to be one of the better adaptations. The film successfully captured the game’s fun spirit and simple concept of birds vs. pigs with a story that is generally enjoyable and a colorful, detailed animation style that felt true to the style of the game.
That doesn’t necessarily mean it was a good film, though. In fact, the movie debuted to mixed reviews from critics and audiences, earning just 44% and 48% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes due to a generic, predictable story that wasn’t all that compelling, its reliance on crude and lowbrow humor, and an underutilized cast with characters that were underdeveloped.
Despite the mixed reception, The Angry Birds Movie was a major box office hit, grossing over $352 million worldwide against a $73 million budget to become one of 2016’s top-grossing animated films. It was followed by an even better sequel, The Angry Birds Movie 2, in 2019. Although that movie underperformed at the box office when it only grossed about half of the original’s total gross, it was far better than the first, scoring 72% and 84% critic and audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes thanks to a deeper focus on character development and relationships and a much stronger plot that saw the birds teaming up with the pigs to stop Eagle Island’s leader from destroying both of their islands. A third film, The Angry Birds Movie 3, is currently in the works and set to release in 2027.
What’s New on Paramount+?
The Angry Birds Movie is one of several movies newly streaming on Paramount+. The streamer’s content catalog now also includes other family-friendly movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Ella Enchanted, and Paddington, as well as other films like 22 Jump Street, Annihilation, Gone Baby Gone, and Pulp Fiction.
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Image courtesy of Universal Pictures. -
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