When was the last time you saw an animated flick that promoted team-building, made fun of most of the Hollywood flicks and above all, taught you about important things like forgiveness?

You may not remember the last time but we can tell you about the next one. The Angry Birds Movie 2 will not only get you in a happy mood, but also exit the theatre learning some things that might turn out to be useful.

Directed by first-time director Thurop Van Orman, The Angry Birds Movie 2 revolves around the rise and fall and rise of once-outcast Red (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) whose life changed for the better when he saved the eggs of his fellow birds from becoming dinner to the inhabitants of Piggy Island.

That was in The Angry Birds Movie, so when the Pigs approach the Birds for a truce in the sequel, Red is hesitant and rightly so — his hero worship is under attack.

However, when both the Birds and the Pigs realise that in order to defeat their common enemy — Zeta (Leslie Jones) of the Eagle Island — they have to join forces. So they assemble a team that will put all other teams to shame. With the help of the superfast Chuck (Josh Gad), the super-explosive Bomb (Danny McBride), the super-intelligent Silver (Rachel Bloom), King of the Pigs Leonard (Bill Hader), and Mighty Eagle (Peter Dinklage) to name a few, the enemies of the past, become frenemies of the present to take on their common foe. Don’t be surprised to find a strange back story that’s hard to digest, but that comes quite late, after the Team lands at Eagle Island.

The plot has been designed to make you feel sad for Zeta (Leslie Jones) as well; she lives in an island that is covered with ice and wants to shift to a normal environment so she can live a normal life. Her biggest mistake was attacking the other two islands instead of asking them for help. And to win her battle, she had to defeat Red and his team.

Does she succeed or doesn’t she, that’s another story for another day, but you will have a hilariously good time watching, whichever side you are on.

The animated flick pays tribute to James Bond flicks (parodying the scenes featuring Q, and inspiring the villain’s lair), The Great Escape (Bomb’s escape sequence from his room) and Jaws (‘We are going to need a bigger slingshot’) but not as much as The Seven Samurai, where Lead Bird Red and Pig King Leonard put together a team that can surprise the villains, and even themselves. And surprisingly, it is Chuck’s sister Silver who helps the ‘Samurais’ achieve their ‘Mission Impossible’ by using her brain instead of her anger, something Red would have done.

Add Europe’s The Final Countdown and Bonnie Tyler’s I Need A Hero and you have a film that will keep everyone entertained, be it an eight or an 88-year-old.

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 21st, 2019