Review: A dearth of imagination keeps Goldbeak from taking off

Mom: "We have Kung Fu Panda at home."

The Kung Fu Panda at home? Goldbeak, unfortunately.

Hey, if you're going to do your own version of a popular animated movie, Kung Fu Panda is a good one to ape. It has a lot of sturdy building blocks that can be tweaked and twisted as needed: a good outsider perspective, an easy starting point for an epic quest, plenty of opportunities for action and comedy. Goldbeak goes through the motions of telling a similar story, but it ultimately feels like a movie made of afterthoughts. There are so many moments that are frustrating because they feel so first-draft, so bland, so obviously wrong.

And there are times when I watch a movie like this and think that it would at least play well to kids. But I'm not sure that's true here. There are a lot of reasons older audiences will struggle with Goldbeak: beyond the clunky, sloppy storytelling, there's also rough animation, bad voice-acting, and some bizarre needle drops. But the story is so bland, and largely bereft of action, that I think even kids would find this a slog to sit through. It reminds me of when Star Wars Episode I was about taxes or whatever. Here, the big point of conflict is a natural resource: red rocks that give off anti-gravity power. Not the most exciting stuff.

I wonder if something was lost in translation. Like a lot of international animated movies that eventually make their way to American shores (usually only digitally, like this one), the only option to watch Goldbeak for me was the English dub. It's not great. I really wish there would be a push to provide an option to watch every animated movie that gets released in its original language, because it's often a disservice to force viewers to sit through a half-assed dub.

Ultimately, though, I can't imagine a different language would do much to right the wrongs of this movie. What most of it comes down to is a lack of imagination. Goldbeak takes place in a world of anthropomorphized birds (think the Rito from The Legend of Zelda franchise). The birds are largely viewed through the lens of the dichotomy of flightless birds versus flighted (flying? flightful?) birds. More specifically, chickens and eagles. Birds that can fly are seen as superior, stronger, better. Even in the film's final moments, this idea is weirdly reiterated and even endorsed. I thought the more obvious route would be to show how all birds are strong in their own ways, but no, the chickens are generally shown as being weak, backward, and in need of help.

The film opens in truly bizarre fashion. The eagle mayor of Avian City dies in a...wait, let me check my notes...ah, yes, in a plane crash. Yes, the birds in this movie, despite constantly discussing the ability to fly as an important class signifier, regularly use flying machines to get around. If those machines exist, why don't the chickens get some? Why is flying prowess impressive? Is it just for entertainment purposes? Bizarre. Just as weird is the design of Avian City, which is ostensibly designed specifically for birds who can fly, yet looks like every generic sci-fi city from every movie you've ever seen. Maybe the buildings could float or something? Idk.

Anyways, the mayor's son, Goldbeak, survives the crash and is whisked away to be raised by a chicken woman in a small town, where he's constantly a source of ire. Eagles are seen as dangerous, violent, untrustworthy. Goldbeak does his best to blend in, focusing on honing his running rather than learning to fly, but the town can't accept him, he can't quite keep himself under control, and so he ends up setting off to find answers. Along the way, he learns to fly, learns about his parentage, and comes face to face with the new mayor, his uncle.

Obviously, I don't want to spoil anything in case this rave review is convincing you to check this movie out, but I think we all see where this movie is going. It doesn't do much to keep its cards close to its chest, and that's fine. You don't watch a movie like this for sophisticated plot machinations, but it's still a little disappointing when there's so little surprise along the way. Everything here feels so perfunctory, copy-pasted from other places, all the personality sanded off, plopped down without much care. There's so little to like here, so little to get invested in. Even when obstacles arise, they're overcome so weirdly easily, and then at the end, things wrap up so abruptly without really wrapping up at all. We don't know the fate of the villain, Goldbeak, anybody. It's weird!

Lucklily, though, my frustration with the ending won't last, because I can already feel Goldbeak fading from my memory.