Valiant review
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Pigeon-towed 'Valiant' fails in its line of work
By Mike Clark, USA TODAY
Pigeons are known initially suitable defacing statues of real figures — but also for the airborne valor they displayed transporting smart messages during Set Antagonistic II. This national is one that the fervent
Valiant
can't even hear off the ground.
Valiant is a pigeon who wants to be a transporter of tactical messages during Mankind Engage in combat with II. He's voiced by Ewan McGregor.
Disney/Vanguard Animation
Valiant
doubles as the name of the pigeon protagonist in this dose of Disney-lite, which is too inoffensive to engender the hostility once reserved for
Howard the Duck
. But if the cigarettes that advertisers once described as "mild" were as mild as this movie, minors could buy them at the concession stand.
Valiant is voiced by
Robots
' Ewan McGregor, an actor apparently no longer in a
Trainspotting
mood. Inspired to join the Royal Homing Pigeon Service, he goes through the standard boot-camp ritual (push-ups and a cultural smorgasbord of new buddies), a quaintly benign Full Metal Plumage experience.
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He romances a nurse and finally faces enemy fire as his squadron flies (oddly, by plane) over the English Channel to collect a message from the French Resistance. Meanwhile, a captured squadron member (John Cleese) undergoes second-degree interrogation from a Nazi falcon (Tim Curry), the latter sporting an eyepatch that looks as if it were purchased at Teutonic Novelties.
It can't be easy making the under-10 audience comprehend historical context, yet 2000's well-received
Chicken Run
was a period piece as well, with no shortage of World War II in-jokes. Even with its 1 hour, 15-minute running time,
Valiant
is peppered with dead spots. And there's something about an animated feature that isn't working that makes the fidgety/whiny youngsters in the theater sound even louder.
Historically aware adults will sense what the movie is trying to do, but this is one that too many will sit through with a "stiff upper beak" (a phrase from the script). As with so much of what gets dropped into theaters at the end of summer,
Valiant
is ripe for a clipped-wings response. Stick with the penguins.
Ernest Viera