Valiant, voiced by Ewan McGregor, is a small pigeon hoping to join the elite Royal Homing Pigeon Service, a group of carrier pigeons serving Her Majesty during WWII. He's finally accepted into the motley "Squad F" crew who find themselves on a dangerous mission to rescue a captured pigeon, voiced by John Cleese.
Valiant tries to appeal to both adults and kids but it ends up alienating both of them. The WWII concept is a nice idea but they really didn't do anything interesting with it. The whole idea will go over the kids since they won't be familiar with it so the film relies on cheap gags for laughs. The usual burping, crashing and lame bird jokes are all present here and only a few of them actually work. Adults and teens will probably not be pleased with the humor since it's very obvious and stupid. Luckily, the film is really short and there isn't too much to sit through. The sad part is that the three credited screenwriters couldn't even come up with enough fresh and interesting material to cover 75 minutes worth of film.
I think the main reason why the film is so lackluster is because of the weak cast. None of the actors seem to be trying and most of the characters aren't very interesting. Ewan McGregor is a pretty good actor when he appears on screen. As a voice actor, he's below average and his voice was all wrong for Valiant. Ricky Gervais gives the only interesting performance as the voice of Bugsy but he can't really save the film. John Cleese was only average and he's barely in the film. Besides for the last two, there really weren't any other notable characters or performances.
Maybe I'm being a little too harsh on the movie but the effort here was very weak. The story was very obvious and predictable. The humor was very lame and stupid. The characters were all flat and uninteresting. The best thing about the movie was the animation and that was only average. Compared to recent films like Robots and The Incredibles, the animation just didn't look very good and it hardly saves the film. In the end, Valiant is mostly a harmless film but it's also a dull one and it isn't worth watching. Rating 4/10
Valiant tries to appeal to both adults and kids but it ends up alienating both of them. The WWII concept is a nice idea but they really didn't do anything interesting with it. The whole idea will go over the kids since they won't be familiar with it so the film relies on cheap gags for laughs. The usual burping, crashing and lame bird jokes are all present here and only a few of them actually work. Adults and teens will probably not be pleased with the humor since it's very obvious and stupid. Luckily, the film is really short and there isn't too much to sit through. The sad part is that the three credited screenwriters couldn't even come up with enough fresh and interesting material to cover 75 minutes worth of film.
I think the main reason why the film is so lackluster is because of the weak cast. None of the actors seem to be trying and most of the characters aren't very interesting. Ewan McGregor is a pretty good actor when he appears on screen. As a voice actor, he's below average and his voice was all wrong for Valiant. Ricky Gervais gives the only interesting performance as the voice of Bugsy but he can't really save the film. John Cleese was only average and he's barely in the film. Besides for the last two, there really weren't any other notable characters or performances.
Maybe I'm being a little too harsh on the movie but the effort here was very weak. The story was very obvious and predictable. The humor was very lame and stupid. The characters were all flat and uninteresting. The best thing about the movie was the animation and that was only average. Compared to recent films like Robots and The Incredibles, the animation just didn't look very good and it hardly saves the film. In the end, Valiant is mostly a harmless film but it's also a dull one and it isn't worth watching. Rating 4/10