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Free Birds is a 2013 American animated Thanksgiving science fiction comedy film directed by Jimmy Hayward, who co-wrote the screenplay with the film's producer Scott Mosier. The film stars the voices of Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, and Amy Poehler, with supporting roles by George Takei, Colm Meaney, Keith David, and Dan Fogler. In the film, two turkeys named Reggie and Jake go back in time to the first Thanksgiving to get turkeys off the menu.
Free Birds was produced by Reel FX Creative Studios as its 7th full-length animated feature film and Relativity Media as its 4th animated film after Monster House (2006), The Tale of Despereaux (2008), and 9 (2009). Originally titled Turkeys, and scheduled for 2014, the film was released by Relativity Media on November 1, 2013.
Free Birds grossed $110 million worldwide against a $55 million budget and despite negative reviews, it has garnered a cult following. The film was nominated for the Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement for Music in a Feature Production.
When Reggie is taken to Camp David, he eases into a life of pizza and watching Spanish telenovela. One night, however, he is kidnapped by a turkey named Jake who claims to have been instructed by a being called the “Great Turkey" with the “Sacred Time Knob” to take Reggie and go back in time to the first Thanksgiving to get turkeys off the menu. They steal a Time travel that is controlled by a AI called S.T.E.V.E. (Space Time Exploration Vehicle Envoy) from a government facility and time travel to three days before the first Thanksgiving in 1621.
When they arrive, they are ambushed by Pilgrims but rescued by a flock of turkeys who are led by Broadbeak. The flock used to live in trees but were forced to move underground when the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth. Broadbeak assigns Reggie and his daughter Jenny to spring the Pilgrims’ turkey traps while Jake and her brother Ranger spy on the Pilgrims.
Jake and Ranger discover that the Pilgrims setting up preparations for Thanksgiving with their weapons shack. Meanwhile, Jenny doesn’t believe Reggie is actually from the future, although is impressed with his accidental way of springing traps. They are intercepted by Myles Standish but Reggie sends Jenny into orbit aboard S.T.E.V.E., validating his story. He suggests going to the future with him but she refuses to leave the flock.
Jake tells Reggie about his backstory and assigned mission. Growing up inside a factory farm, every member of his family fattened up on formula as chicks, except for him, because his mother kept him hidden from worker scientists. One night, she tasked him with escaping with a clutch of eggs in order to start his own flock. He managed to escape, but the eggs were taken by the scientists. Shortly afterward, the Great Turkey appeared and gave him his mission. Jake believes that stopping turkeys from becoming Thanksgiving dinners will make up for his failure to his family.
Reggie reluctantly goes along with Jake's plan to attack the Pilgrims. They destroy the weapons shack and rescue Ranger's friends who didn’t escape, Amos and Furley. However, Jake accidentally leaves a trail of gunpowder to the flock's home with a stolen powder horn from Standish. The Pilgrims capture enough of the flock for Thanksgiving and Broadbeak sacrifices his life to help the remaining turkeys escape.
Feeling that he has let the flock down, Reggie returns to the present, where he discovers from S.T.E.V.E. and three alternate versions of himself that he and the Great Turkey are the same person. Reggie time travels to the night that Jake let down his family in order to send him on his mission with a golden doorknob from Camp David to dub the Sacred Time Knob. Jenny becomes the new leader of the flock and orders the remaining turkeys to prepare an attack on Plymouth Colony.
Jake, Jenny and Ranger lead the attack on Plymouth Colony just as the Wampanoag arrive. Reggie returns to 1621 in order to stop the attack, inadvertently trapping Standish in the time stream. Through S.T.E.V.E. and a pizza delivery man, Reggie convinces the Pilgrims and Wampanoags that pizza is a better Thanksgiving food than turkeys, excluding their kind from the tradition. He decides to stay in 1621 while Jake and S.T.E.V.E. look for new adventures, possibly rewriting history once again.
In a mid-credits scene, Jake returns with S.T.E.V.E to Reggie and Jenny just two seconds after his departure holding a duck and a chicken, inquiring about the existence of a turducken.
Additional voices by Jeff Biancalana, Jason Finazzo, Jimmy Hayward, Josh Lawson, and Scott Mosier.
In October 2012, it was announced that Relativity Media would co-finance, co-produce, and distribute the film. Studio executives were not satisfied with the film's direction and cartoonish look, so the plot was given a more serious tone, Brannon was fired, and Jimmy Hayward took over the directing position. Reel FX was also told by Relativity Media to cut scenes with "sexual tension" between Reggie and Jake. Originally scheduled for November 14, 2014, the film was moved up by a year to November 1, 2013, due to the vacant slot left after the delay of DreamWorks Animation's Mr. Peabody & Sherman. In March 2013, the film was retitled to Free Birds. Dell provided technology and IT infrastructure to Reel FX for use in the film's production. Animators and artists used the software Avian to produce the turkey characters' feathers.
The film's score was originally set to be composed by Steve Martin, with one of Martin's demos having vocals performed by Leonard Nimoy. Martin left when the film was pushed toward a more serious direction, so the score was instead composed by Dominic Lewis. The soundtrack was released by Relativity Music Group on October 29, 2013.
Justin Chang of Variety gave the film a negative review, saying "This seemingly innocuous toon fantasy becomes another noxious-but-sanitized exercise in family-friendly cultural insensitivity." Alonso Duralde of The Wrap gave the film a negative review, saying "Even setting aside the film's disregard for time-travel paradoxes and genocide metaphors—trust me, you don't want to wade into either of those— Free Birds just isn't funny." Stephanie Zacharek of The Village Voice gave the film a negative review, saying "Like so many modern animated features, Free Birds packs too much in; the picture feels cramped and cluttered, and, despite its occasionally manic action, it moves as slowly as a fattened bird waddling toward its doom." Kate Erbland of Film.com gave the film a 7.6 out of 10, saying " Free Birds is a more than worthy (and weird) holiday diversion for the whole family." Stephan Lee of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C, saying "Often, you can point to a middling animated film's visuals as its saving grace. But this colonial world, which should feel like an expansive autumnal panorama, feels oddly inert and two-dimensional." Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "The 3-D animated film, the first of the holiday entries, is likable and amusing, if slight." Chris Cabin of Slant Magazine gave the film one out of four stars, saying "The film is absent of humor and thrills, and accented with designs and color schemes that are equally notable for their lack of risk."
Sheri Linden of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a negative review, saying "Like the ungainly avian creatures at the center of the herky-jerky adventure, this 'toon seldom gets off the ground." Jessica Herndon of the Associated Press gave the film two out of four stars, saying "A solid premiere effort that shows Reel FX's potential to produce quality full-length animation. But the story-line, with its hypothetical constituents, seems a little desperate at times, even for a kiddie film." Linda Barnard of the Toronto Star gave the film one out of four stars, calling the film "A seasonally pegged 3D cartoon bore that sets the bar so low, it could give a slug a concussion." Tom Russo of The Boston Globe gave the film two out of four stars, calling the film "A welcome foray into underexploited territory, conceptually at least." Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic gave the film two out of five stars, saying "It isn't cute. It isn't really funny. It just kind of is." Louis Black of The Austin Chronicle gave the film one and a half stars out of five, saying " Free Birds falls flat, despite its good intentions, ideological cuteness, humorous polish, and skillful computer animation. The fine voice talents of the almost-ideal cast are wasted." Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News gave the film two out of five stars, saying "Most minor animated movies are so rote that it's worth acknowledging a strange bird like this cheerfully gonzo kid flick. It's no masterpiece, but if you’re hoping for a family film that will keep everyone reasonably entertained, this will fly."
Miriam Bale of The New York Times gave the film a negative review, saying "The concept is inane, and the execution is manic and unoriginal." Sara Stewart of the New York Post gave the film one and a half stars out of four, saying "Is Hollywood scheming to turn your little ones into strident vegetarians? Could be, but I wish they’d do it with material more inspired than Free Birds, a forgettable—and occasionally borderline offensive—animated tale of turkeys trying to take back Thanksgiving." David Hiltbrand of The Philadelphia Inquirer gave the film one and a half stars out of four, saying " Free Birds is a stale turkey hash that heaves a lot of ingredients in the oven but never turns on the gas, a frantic attempt to come up with an animated film built around Thanksgiving Day traditions." Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail gave the film one and a half stars out of four, saying "The movie's animal rights, vegetarian message should go down easily with politically correct parents—at least until they choke on the offensive depiction of 17th-century turkeys as face-painted, headband-wearing native Americans." Stephanie Merry of The Washington Post gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "Finally, there's a movie vegetarian parents can enjoy with their impressionable offspring." Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film one out of four stars, saying "In execution, the film is all sidekicks and sight gags, with little story cohesion or purpose." Mark Kermode gave the film a negative review and found the film to be lacking in creativity and originality. Kermode pointed out that the movie’s premise, involving turkeys traveling back in time to change the course of Thanksgiving, was not executed well. He thought that the humor fell flat and that the animation was not up to par with other contemporary acclaimed animated films to other films involving turkeys since Chicken Run and later said of the film "Anyone who's seen Chicken Run will wonder why they're not enjoying a well-constructed Aardman animation rather than attempting to make sense of this incoherent transatlantic trifle.".
Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a mixed review, saying "No, Free Birds is not (sorry) a turkey of a film. But it doesn’t really soar terribly high either. I only wish the quality of the writing in the earlier parts of the movie had been maintained throughout. If that had been the case, Reggie, Jake and their fellow turkeys just might have been flying high with the eagles—our official national birds." Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a mixed review, saying "Although it seldom approaches the inspiration of its plucky premise—a pair of turkeys travel back in a time machine to the first Thanksgiving in a bid to scratch the traditional entree off the menu— Free Birds nevertheless manages to avoid being branded a holiday turkey." Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com gave the film one and a half stars out of four, saying "Everything about Free Birds feels perfunctory, from its generic title and holiday setting to its starry voice cast and undistinguished use of 3-D."
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