Getting Movie Slate back on track wasn’t an easy task, but it was a task that had to be done. I would like to thank my friend Charonib for pushing me forward and getting the blog revived. The initial idea of having Movie Slate lost in thought while “researching” for her review of Angry Birds came from Charon himself, and I liked it enough to give it a spin. I think we all know people who drop all their responsibilities just to play a videogame, or watch a movie, or marathon a TV Show (hell, I’ve done that a few times) so I found the idea funny and relateable in a weird way. It made Movie Slate more flawed, which I think is something she’s needed for quite a while already.

“Angry Birds”. I think that says it all, doesn’t it? Let me just start this up by saying that, even if I’m not the biggest fan of Sean Penn in the World, he’s totally wasted in this movie. Why did Sony hire this two-time-Academy-Award-Winning actor just to play a character that groans and says nothing but one line? Did Sean Penn have any pending debts, that could only be repaid by appearing on a movie that’s as lively as a hollow kidney stone, and just as painful? I guess that’s the best way to describe this movie. It’s like passing a kidney stone. It’s the biggest most glaring evidence that in today’s world we run a gimmick so hard into the dirt it comes out the other side of the World. It’s not the biggest cynical cash grab in the history of cinema (there’s the Transformers movies for example, or any movie based on a Hasbro property for that matter) but it’s just downright unpleasant to sit through. The characters are so unlikeable I was siding with the bad guys and with the battered anger-riddled protagonist. Fuck the birds of that stupid island, they deserve getting their eggs stolen. Also if you thought Peter Dinklage was wasted in “Pixels” this movie makes such poor use of his awesome talent it’s borderline criminal.

“Angry Birds” is as hollow as the app in which it’s based, but way less entertaining and overly long. Despite it being colorful and well animated, it’s an atrocity of story telling, character and movie making. It’s not so bad it’s good, it’s so bad it’s boring. Not even worth to surf through when you’re switching channels.

Drawing this piece wasn’t without it’s short comings. There was going to be only one panel at the start, but the more I drew it the more I realized we needed a build up for the joke. So I added two more panels just to let the scene breathe and then drop the punchline. It also gave me the chance to turn this into a comic strip, and those tend to do better than single pictures in the long run. Comic strips are more appealing when it comes to comedic timing. Also, Cotton Bucket. Bucket has become the unsung heroine of this blog. I need to draw her more often, or maybe even give her a blog of her own. That could be fun!