Lego is truly universal -- its licenses cover everything from Doctor Who to Batman, The Wizard of Oz to Scooby-Doo. The beloved plastic brick can now add Angry Birds to its roster, with the reveal of a wave of kits set to tie in with the upcoming Angry Birds Movie.The animated film -- which sees Jason Sudeikis voicing main bird Red, reluctantly drawn into tropical island politics when the troublesome Bad Piggies arrive -- will spawn six Lego sets, targeting different price points. "Piggy Car Escape" comes with the yellow bird, named Chuck for the movie, and a pig, with a hot-rod style vehicle. "Piggy Plane Attack" is the first set to include Red, with a catapult to fling him at the pigs' biplane. "Bird Island Egg Heist" packs in another Red, white bird Matilda, and a Biker Pig, along with a Harley Davidson-inspired motorbike and Matilda's house.At the larger end of the scale, there's "Pig City Showdown", a destructible city-scape with Red, pink bird Stella, and two pigs, and "Piggy Pirate Ship", a huge galleon with another Red minifig, explosive black bird Bomb, Pirate Pig, and Leonard, a long-suffering minordomo pig from the film.
"King Pig's Castle" is the crowning achievement of the series though -- a massive build that comes with three porcine characters, yet another Red, and a bigfig of Mighty Eagle.Given the franchise's focus on knocking down pig buildings, expect all kits to feature similar easy-to-destroy mechanics as found in the Lego Minecraft kits. Lego has also launched anAngry Birds minisitefor the line.Lego aside, there's a lot riding on The Angry Birds Movie. Developer Rovio announced major job losses in August 2015, and lost CEO Pekka Rantala in December. A new surge of interest in the property could be a lifeline for the gaming company.The Angry Birds movie opens 20 May 2016, and also features actors Josh Gad as Chuck, Danny McBride as Bomb, Peter Dinklage as the Mighty Eagle, Maya Rudolph as Matilda, and Bill Hader as Leonard. The Lego kits will be on sale from April.Let friends in your social network know what you are reading aboutTwitterGoogle+LinkedInPinterestPosted!A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.
Log InSubscribed, but don't have a login?Activate your digital access.'Angry Birds' lacks 'Lego' heartCLOSExEmbedFor those stalwart souls who have resisted one of the great time wasters of the iPhone era, Angry Birds is a puzzle game in which the player uses to a virtual slingshot to launch a barrage of cartoon birds as missiles. Their target: ugly-cute green pigs who have stolen their eggs.First released in 2010, the app became a pop-culture phenomenon, spawning toys, T-shirts, backpacks and theme-park attractions. All of this made “The Angry Birds Movie,” which hits theaters Friday, inevitable. Yet it is no small task turning cutesy game icons — which we’re used to seeing at the millimeter scale — into larger-than-life characters with quirks, backstories and narrative arcs that go beyond their catapult trajectories.Screenwriter Jon Vitti and first-time directors Fergal Reilly and Clay Kaytis certainly give it a try, but their bag of tricks is mostly recycled and their sense of humor is aimed squarely at 12-year-old boys.
The opening action sequence is straight out of the "Ice Age" movies, except instead of a saber-toothed squirrel with an acorn, it’s Red — a squat, flightless bird with Groucho Marx eyebrows and the voice of Jason Sudeikis — racing to deliver a "hatch day" present. After the client takes issue with his tardiness, Red loses his temper and winds up in anger-management class, where he meets Chuck (Josh Gad), a yellow bird with Flash speed, and Bomb (Danny McBride), who literally blows up when he gets mad.As the archetypal lonely outsider, Red is the only bird on the island who is suspicious when a ship arrives with a crew of roly-poly piggies led by Leonard (Bill Hader). As for the rest of the villagers, anyone who isn’t wowed by the newcomers’ high-tech gadgets (especially the all-important slingshot) is won over by their stage show, a sort of Country Thunder From Down Under with hip-swiveling piggies wearing, shall we say, ham-less chaps.That’s the level of comedy throughout the film, which is packed with bad puns (“Pluck my life”) and other mildly risque material designed to make older kids giggle while sailing over the heads of their younger siblings.
Some of the sight gags are based on bird biology, as when a mommy bird packs lunch for her kids by regurgitating it, although others ignore the facts of avian life (such as: birds don’t pee).In a sure sign of a premise running thin, there are numerous, utterly irrelevant pop-culture references, including a two-second clip parodying "The Shining" ("Red rum!").Eventually, of course, the pigs’ nefarious purpose (see first paragraph above) is revealed, and it’s up to Red to save the day by turning himself and his neighbors into missiles raining feathery terror down on the pigs’ city. If you’re a fan of Angry Birds, it’s definitely fun to see the game mechanics blown up to cinematic scale. So much so, in fact, that it makes the buildup — the budding friendships and the heart-tugging flashbacks — seem all the more obligatory, even superfluous.Two years ago, “The Lego Movie” proved once and for all that just because a film is a transparent exercise in corporate brand expansion doesn’t mean it can’t have heart.
“The Angry Birds Movie” is a reminder of just how hard it remains to manufacture sincerity.Rating: Two stars (out of four)Kerry Lengel is a features writer for the Arizona Republic. From a Russian LEGO catalog, we have our very first look at LEGO’s Angry Birds sets from the upcoming movie, which ought to at least please fans who wanted the big L to swipe the construction-toy licenses from K’NEX. On first glance, the pig structures seem a lot sturdier than in the game, though the sets do include slingshot mechanisms, and the castle features a trigger that, when hit, releases the eggs. Only one of the pigs in the movie seems to have a name — Leonard (Bill Hader) — but the white bird is named Matilda (Maya Rudolph), and the yellow bird is named Chuck (Josh Gad). Stella (Kate McKinnon) is already pretty well established in canon by an actual moniker, unlike most who are usually referred to by color, so I don’t know if “Red” really qualifies as a name, since it’s a descriptor as well.