The Angry Birds Movie

What’s worse than a video game-inspired movie? A video game-inspired animated feature. If you’ve played the game, you know the story: A bunch of wingless birds fire a giant slingshot in an effort to get their eggs back from an army of green pigs. Somehow it took four writers (John Cohen, Mikael Hed, Mikko Pöllä and Jon Vitti) to come up with this. Meanwhile, it seems not to have occurred to director Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly—or anybody else—that what’s cute and amusing on a smartphone might look trivial, cheap and shoddy on a theater screen—to say nothing of the 3-D. Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader and Peter Dinklage head the voice cast. It’s harmless enough, as junk goes, but why blow 10 bucks on it when the app is only 99 cents—and you get to play? J.L.