Valiant

This film is about a pigeon called Valiant, whom no one thinks he could do anything big. It turns out that he does Britain a great service in World War II as a messenger pigeon.

The animation is excellent. The movements are smooth, and the birds are portrayed in great detail. However, the plot is very thin and totally predictable. The humour is not funny because it repeats itself every 30 seconds. There must have been 30 scenes where birds have mid air collisions and 30 scenes where birds hit a post and falls down. That does not even count the 30 farts and belches. And have I forgotten to mention smelly armpits? Can the filmmakers be more inspired and make less crude humour? I am not sure if kids will enjoy this. The characters are not even likable or cute. It is not entertaining enough.

I'm beginning to find a lot of these CG animated movies terribly formulaic (Magic Roundabout's horrendous storyline a case in point)so this movie made a refreshing change when I took my 3 sons to see a preview. Not overly long, basing the story around Homing Pigeons used in WW11 was a great idea and really appealed to the boys. The characters were fun and well voiced (parents can play a game of 'guess the actor')and there were some genuinely laugh out loud moments. Not quite the emotional pull of 'Finding Nemo' but that wasn't the point. To sum it up, my 11 year-old said. 'Great, Mum. About the war without being too violent for my little brothers and not too babyish for me.' Recommended.

The reviews on Valiant are horrible. This I find to be a big mistake, I personally loved the film, it's largest mistake is a lack of a good target audience, it is kinda a silly kids animated film with fart jokes and such, but than it has in my opinion three times as many jokes for adults about World War 2. In fact I think I may have liked it more than my brothers who are 12 and 6 did. It has some hilarious cracks on Hitler and D-Day which is usually something that I find impossible to laugh about. The short(76 minute) running time just helps the film because there are only so many jokes it can make without offending someone and it never tries to use one more than once. The plot is filled with holes but is perfect for making all the jokes. The screenplay has some good dialogue and makes all the great jokes. The voice talents are great. The film is well directed but could have been better. The film is perfectly animated.

Oh boy, Disney has their hands full with this one... a British animated and voiced film about World War Two with death, destruction and rude jokes. Oh, lets hope they don't cut the living hell out of this thing.

This is the story of Valiant, a smaller than normal pigeon, who wants to join up with the Royal Carrier Pigeon Service. With the help of Bugsy, a con artist pigeon he accidentally saves, he manages to trick his way into the service. Training has barely begun when they are rushed off to France to bring back an important message. There Valiant, Bugsy and his squad come face to face with the evil falcon's who'd like nothing better than to make them lunch.

A brief 75 minutes long (reports of 109 minutes must be wrong) this is a good send up of World War Two conventions. We have hateful Nazi falcons (the leader is played evilly by Tim Curry); the do or die mission; Mom's tearful goodbye; Edith Piaf on the gramophone, French resistance, balmy Brits (two of which are John Cleese and John Hurt); heroic sacrifice and on and on and on.

The voice cast is excellent and any Anglophiles out there will want to see this for the great voice cast which includes Ewan McGregor as Valiant, who is a wonderful hero, Ricky Gervais as Bugsy who is hysterical as the slob friend, and then add in Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Curry, Cleese, Hurt and many others others bringing life to the birds on screen. The whole cast is fun to listen to.

The humor is a wide net of British style humor from puns to fart jokes to clever spoof to just about anything. In its way its completely different than any typical American (ie.Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks) film. Its not broad American humor, its quiet British humor with slips into slapstick. Its a Britcom versus sitcom.

Technically this film is a marvel with stuff that will put Disney to shame, and make Pixar and Dreamworks work harder. There are some beautifully rendered sequences, in particular the numerous action scenes. WOW.

The problem here is the pacing which is a tad slow. It un-spools like a British World War Two film from the period. Its not bad but it might prove taxing to American audiences who are used to faster paced comedy. However once they go to France on the mission it picks up nicely with chase after chase.

A friend asked if it was similar to Chicken Run, sort of. Both are Britsh war spoofs, but the style of humor is different and you don't have Mel Gibson bending it in the direction of American nonsense. Chicken Run is probably better but its hard to say fairly since I need to see Valiant again.

Certainly not the be all and end all I do recommend it, especially if you like British style humor.

Although this may not tickle the fancy of non-Brits, Valiant is a light-hearted comical little tale (it's quite short) of an even littler pigeon with a big personality who wants to be in the RHSP as a wartime carrier pigeon. The characters are well defined and work together well with a generously simple plot. Bugsy (Ricky Gervais) is hilarious and most of the voices provided were perfect, although it would have been better if I didn't have a constant mental image of the actors while looking at their animated aliases.

Occasionally there are moments of dialogue or actions that are quite obviously meant to be funny and aren't but these are generally glazed over by silliness. A must-see for animation fans/Brits, but perhaps more laughable for the younger generation among us.