Reviews & Ratings for
Gus - Petit oiseau, grand voyage (2014)

Yellowbird is about a(nother) bird voiced by Seth Green who as an egg fell out of the nest and wandered his way into a ruined house, and since then has been too nervous to explore the world like the ladybird who raised him tells him to. At an adult age, he finds the leader of a flock of blue birds in pain, dying as a matter of fact, so this convinces the ladybird to get the Yellowbird to lead the flock, which includes a love interest, a chick who has to be carried around and a jerk who sounds and even acts like Benson from Regular Show with extreme doubts about Yellowbird's lead, and it doesn't help that Yellowbird has no experience at all in directions.

Yellowbird may be something you'd expect to see on Netflix, but surprisingly......it isn't bad. With cute visual development by Benjamin Renner, who made the adorable Ernest & Celestine, an exceptional score by Stephen Warbeck and direction by Christian de Vita, who's helped on artwork for Wes Anderson's last three films, it feels less Hollywood than its cast and tone seem.

The script has some goof-ups in its appeal (a character says "Oh my God" instead of "Oh my gosh") and the humour doesn't always work but when it did I could tell that the creator of the overlooked Hoodwinked got it in there. It's almost completely tame, as apart from one joke about confusing a plane for a bird and going "into its behind", there is no toilet humour that you'd find in other CG bird flicks, like Free Birds or Rio 2. Is it post-2007 Disney or post-2010 DreamWorks quality? Nah, but it is a very neat-looking and charming start for TeamTO.