(Watch Free Birds Online) Not every animated film needs to be an event, but “Free Birds” could use a little more oomph to make it a must-see for crowds currently starving for family entertainment. It’s not particularly exciting, never lands a laugh, and doesn’t have the ambition to truly lampoon Thanksgiving traditions. It’s a bland effort that’s contently cartoon until it suddenly feels the need to trigger emotions with weird detours into death and survival. Perhaps the idea looked better on paper. As a CG-animated endeavor, “Free Birds” packs very little punch, with wild mood swings that take a simple story and needlessly complicates it to fill a contractual run time.

(Watch Free Birds Online) A blue turkey in a red turkey world, Reggie (voiced by Owen Wilson) has always felt like an outsider. Growing aware that his feathered brothers are simply being fattened to supply Thanksgiving meal demands, Reggie wants out, lucking into a full pardon from the President. Retiring to Camp David, Reggie discovers the joys of telenovelas and pizza, while coming across crackpot bird Jake (Woody Harrelson), a turkey on a mission to find a secret government time machine, visit the first Thanksgiving celebration, and end the holiday torment.(Download Free Birds Movie) Boarding S.T.E.V.E. (George Takei), an egg-shaped ship capable of time travel, Reggie and Jake zoom back to 1621, stumbling across a pack of turkeys struggling for survival against a Pilgrim hunter (Colm Meaney), while Jenny (Amy Poehler) tempts the future birds with her warrior spirit.

(Watch Free Birds Online) The director of “Free Birds” is Jimmy Hayward, who gifted the moviegoing public with “Jonah Hex” a few years back. While the mangled comic book western certainly seemed like a career killer, Hayward managed to find another gig, returning to his animated origins with what initially appears to be softball material concerning a turkey who doesn’t want to be turned into a Thanksgiving meal. “Free Birds” is largely a comedy, and one rooted in silly behavior and non sequiturs, playing to a younger audience raised on basic cable tomfoolery, trying to insert humor everywhere to keep the feature fresh and on the move. Unfortunately,(Download Free Birds Movie) the screenplay by Hayward and Scott Mosier is content with dumb turkey jokes, word play, and slapstick comedy, refusing the opportunity of time travel to really work over the concept of the first Thanksgiving. Instead, the picture positions Reggie’s discovery of pizza as the peak of hilarity, also getting plenty of mileage out of Jake’s stupidity. These are one-time riffs dragged out well beyond their expiration date, and while the tone of the early going is playfully daft, there’s no sense of adventure to the gags, most falling flat.

(Watch Free Birds Online) The caper side of “Free Birds” is also missing invention. The time travel aspect has potential, but the picture doesn’t do anything with it, keeping the action in 1621, though it doesn’t mess with the Pilgrims and Native Americans, keeping focus on the bird nation as it fights to survive.(Download Free Birds Movie) There are references to “Back to the Future” and “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” yet “Free Birds” doesn’t embark on its own time-twisting mischief. There’s some commotion late in the movie that finds Reggie building a maze of alternate timelines to refocus efforts, but that’s the extent of the fun. The potential of S.T.E.V.E. is unrealized. It’s a missed opportunity, especially when the rest of the story settles on uninteresting conflicts with forgettable characters.

(Watch Free Birds Online) Being broad isn’t enough for Hayward and Mosier, who order up a little tragedy to motivate third-act war. The pair kills off a character, not in a gruesome manner, but certainly in a manipulative way,(Download Free Birds Movie) trying to steal an emotional response instead of earning one. It’s an artificial effort to position the turkeys for climatic needs, while the fireball incident that causes the casualty is just mindless noise to capture attention. “Free Birds” doesn’t need darkness to work itself into a frenzy, and I would trade all the painful screenwriting formula for a single bellylaugh.

(Watch Free Birds Online) “Free Birds” opens with a disclaimer that it’s a comedy, and shouldn’t be taken seriously. This is probably a defensive maneuver to ward away the theory that turkey wasn’t even part of early Thanksgiving celebrations, and, while a tale of animal welfare, Reggie happily gobbles down pizza toppings such as pepperoni and anchovies. Even for an animated film, I don’t think anyone was doing their homework. There are certainly funny people involved with “Free Birds” (Poehler was born to do voice work), so the potential was there. It’s simply a sloppy, unlikable picture, missing its madcap, time-jumping intentions by a country mile.