Although Angry Birds may not be the first game to be made into a feature-length film, it is certainly the first smartphone app to hit the big screen. What a time to be alive! One would think that the film adaptation of a simple but maddeningly addictive 2D procrastination tool that involves firing off flightless birds into elaborate wooden structures made by egg-stealing pigs (who are, for some unexplained reason, green) provides a great opportunity for creative invention, for exploring some untrodden territory, and for (dare I say it?) deepening the backstories of these angriest of birds. But the makers of The Angry Birds Movie prove us wrong. A missed shot indeed.

Rather, what we get is a reductive tale of good versus evil littered with bland, and sometimes outright offensive, gags. We are introduced to Red, an unloveable outcast who is the only really ‘angry’ bird on the otherwise tranquil bird island. Enter the pigs: one bearded pig-king and a legion of homogeneously silly piggie-minions, who are looked upon with great suspicion by Red, but receive a warm welcome by the bird community despite the fact that they carry with them loads of crates that say “TNT”. The inevitable happens: the pigs destroy the bird town, steal their eggs, and Red is proven right in his suspicion. After a weird speech whose main point seems to be that anger sometimes is the answer, Red leads a now unanimously angry legion of birds to an epic siege of the piggie stronghold. This may be the only mildly entertaining part of the film, but references to the gameplay of the smartphone app don’t do much to make up for the undeserved glee with which these birds take revenge on the pigs by utterly annihilating their city. The shoddy plot and the predictable progression of the film could be forgiven if it wasn’t for the endless tsunami of lame puns and tasteless jokes. At one point Chuck, the yellow bird, takes a shit on an officer as we listen to ‘Sound of da Police’ in the background, and later, we have to endure about a minute of the Mighty Eagle pissing in the Lake of Wisdom…“what the flock!”

Kids deserve better than The Angry Birds Movie. Perhaps the most telling (and frightening) thing about the film is that it now seems to be appropriated by some ‘white nationalist’ and far-right bloggers who celebrate it as “a cautionary tale about #refugeeswelcome”, and who recognise themselves in the unsung but eventually sung hero of Red, who is first ostracised for his suspicion of newcomers, but later heralded as a saviour. There are even photos floating around twitter of Donald Trump’s hair photoshopped onto Red’s feathery head. Could this film grow to become a cinematic anthem for extreme-right populism? Let’s just wait until the inevitable sequel.