Oh boy, Disney has their hands full with this one... a British animated and voiced film about World War Two with death, destruction and rude jokes. Oh, lets hope they don't cut the living hell out of this thing.
This is the story of Valiant, a smaller than normal pigeon, who wants to join up with the Royal Carrier Pigeon Service. With the help of Bugsy, a con artist pigeon he accidentally saves, he manages to trick his way into the service. Training has barely begun when they are rushed off to France to bring back an important message. There Valiant, Bugsy and his squad come face to face with the evil falcon's who'd like nothing better than to make them lunch.
A brief 75 minutes long (reports of 109 minutes must be wrong) this is a good send up of World War Two conventions. We have hateful Nazi falcons (the leader is played evilly by Tim Curry); the do or die mission; Mom's tearful goodbye; Edith Piaf on the gramophone, French resistance, balmy Brits (two of which are John Cleese and John Hurt); heroic sacrifice and on and on and on.
The voice cast is excellent and any Anglophiles out there will want to see this for the great voice cast which includes Ewan McGregor as Valiant, who is a wonderful hero, Ricky Gervais as Bugsy who is hysterical as the slob friend, and then add in Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Curry, Cleese, Hurt and many others others bringing life to the birds on screen. The whole cast is fun to listen to.
The humor is a wide net of British style humor from puns to fart jokes to clever spoof to just about anything. In its way its completely different than any typical American (ie.Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks) film. Its not broad American humor, its quiet British humor with slips into slapstick. Its a Britcom versus sitcom.
Technically this film is a marvel with stuff that will put Disney to shame, and make Pixar and Dreamworks work harder. There are some beautifully rendered sequences, in particular the numerous action scenes. WOW.
The problem here is the pacing which is a tad slow. It un-spools like a British World War Two film from the period. Its not bad but it might prove taxing to American audiences who are used to faster paced comedy. However once they go to France on the mission it picks up nicely with chase after chase.
A friend asked if it was similar to Chicken Run, sort of. Both are Britsh war spoofs, but the style of humor is different and you don't have Mel Gibson bending it in the direction of American nonsense. Chicken Run is probably better but its hard to say fairly since I need to see Valiant again.
Certainly not the be all and end all I do recommend it, especially if you like British style humor.
