Valiant (2005)

Here is a terrific CGI animated film from the UK that is beautiful visually and easy to enjoy and has a really unique pitch: WW2 fighter pigeons and rah rah Brit derring do, but has seriously miscast main voice actors: especially Ricky Gervais and Ewan MacGregor. Gervais's annoying babble and rant is so tedious it almost overtakes the film, and MacGregor does not have an animated voice. It is too ordinary. However everything else and everyone else seem right and the wartime miniature visuals are very inventive. The French resistance mouse is hilarious. It was a complete surprise to me as I avoided it on first release and only saw it as a DVD. well recommended for 10 years olds and if you can get past the Gervais nonsense patter you will love it entirely. Reminders of A BUGS LIFE and RATATOUILLE and even HAPPY FEET will emerge as you watch but VALIANT is so funny and well planned it easily stands on it's own.

The idea was brilliant, almost inspired, but it turned into very much of a lame duck (no pun intended) on screen. The Dickin award was and is a sort of animals VC or George Cross. In World War II (when this film is set), homing pigeons more or less cleaned up with 32 out of 54 awarded for displaying conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty whilst serving with British Commonwealth armed forces or civil emergency services (according to Wikipedia). Now back to the movie. The trouble is that it never really managed to run (or fly) very far with the original immaculate conception. I thought that it pretty much found its level by catering for eight year-olds (of all ages) by copious amounts of burping and farting from the birdie characters, which was more or less the high point of the action. The plot (if you can call it that) was thinner than the wafer on your interval ice-cream, with the eponymous Valiant (voiced by Ewan McGregor), wanting to be a hero in the Royal Air Force Homing Pigeon Service, which flew messages about enemy movements across the English Channel. Although it may represent a (forgotten) slice of wartime history, it fails miserably to impress at the comedic level, except unintentionally: "We have ways of making you squawk" is possibly one of the worst lines ever in movie history (and I've sat through a few, I can tell you). There are possible compensations though. Here, I'm thinking of the richest array of vocal talents never to have shown their faces on screen, probably making it one of the most expensive British voiced-over films ever. You name them and there they are. Everyone from John Cleese and Hugh Laurie to John Hurt and Rik Mayall. But then these voices are so distinctive, the problem I had was in attempting to dissociate the cartoon from his real life comedy persona. Moreover, this wasn't helped by the writers apparently trying to recreate their sitcom characters by cunning use of dialogue(certainly with the Ricky Gervais character, who sounded more like David Brent out of "The Office" than David Brent out of "The Office"). In fact, it was so predictable at times, they may just as well have got Rory Bremner to do all the voices. (Perhaps they did - that would account for Hugh Laurie coming across more like his Blackadder character than Hugh Laurie doing his Blackadder character.)So my advice to you is not to inflict this film on yourself unless you're with (or you are) an eight year-old (of any age) desperate to spend an hour and a half out of the rain. Of course, I could be wrong and possibly this film made a lot of money at the box office. In which case I can only think that the movie-going public were shat on by the film makers from a great height. Final verdict: Bird's Custard.

My entire family enjoyed this brilliant and humorous movie, which offered a heart-warming component. The story line is captivating from the very beginning and retains full attention throughout. Bird-themed humor is consistently intertwined. Animation is first rate, as are the action scenes. The voice over actors and actresses are convincing and funny. The story wasn't entirely predictable, especially the latter half. Predictability seems to be a problem with many of the CGI animations produced recently. Interestingly unprecedented in CGI animations is the underlying historical element presented in this genius flick: the role of messenger pigeons in World War II.

Valiant, voiced by Ewan McGregor, is a small pigeon hoping to join the elite Royal Homing Pigeon Service, a group of carrier pigeons serving Her Majesty during WWII. He's finally accepted into the motley "Squad F" crew who find themselves on a dangerous mission to rescue a captured pigeon, voiced by John Cleese.Valiant tries to appeal to both adults and kids but it ends up alienating both of them. The WWII concept is a nice idea but they really didn't do anything interesting with it. The whole idea will go over the kids since they won't be familiar with it so the film relies on cheap gags for laughs. The usual burping, crashing and lame bird jokes are all present here and only a few of them actually work. Adults and teens will probably not be pleased with the humor since it's very obvious and stupid. Luckily, the film is really short and there isn't too much to sit through. The sad part is that the three credited screenwriters couldn't even come up with enough fresh and interesting material to cover 75 minutes worth of film.I think the main reason why the film is so lackluster is because of the weak cast. None of the actors seem to be trying and most of the characters aren't very interesting. Ewan McGregor is a pretty good actor when he appears on screen. As a voice actor, he's below average and his voice was all wrong for Valiant. Ricky Gervais gives the only interesting performance as the voice of Bugsy but he can't really save the film. John Cleese was only average and he's barely in the film. Besides for the last two, there really weren't any other notable characters or performances.Maybe I'm being a little too harsh on the movie but the effort here was very weak. The story was very obvious and predictable. The humor was very lame and stupid. The characters were all flat and uninteresting. The best thing about the movie was the animation and that was only average. Compared to recent films like Robots and The Incredibles, the animation just didn't look very good and it hardly saves the film. In the end, Valiant is mostly a harmless film but it's also a dull one and it isn't worth watching. Rating 4/10