Tweets are old news, bird tweets, we mean.

Birl Idol

Director – Jyotin Goel

Writer – Jyotin Goel

Music - Siddharth Haldipur

Voiceovers - Juhi Chawla, Shaan, Prashant Narayanan

What goes for the film - Colourful animation and witty dialogues.

What goes against the audience - Length and a stodgy screenplay.

Cinemaa opinion - Quite an enjoyable experience wrt to standard Indian animation fare. Scroll down for a detailed review.

Pleasant surprise. That will be the primary emotion that will run through when one walks out of the theatre having watched this one. At a time when commercial film-making is bending backwards to impress viewers with technical wizardry, here comes an Indian animation film that charms with its plot, wit and originality.

This sweet little film talks of the world of birds which is actually no different than that of humans. The birds not only talk, walk and behave like us but also have an archaic, regressive and rigid society like ours where a thing as simple as marrying outside one’s breed can bring a death sentence. To avoid that, the film’s first generation protagonists take a flight out of birdland and set up house far far away and bring up their cross-bred child (Hummi) away from those influences. Hummi grows up like any other loved, talented, young human boy would. Having good friends, popular at college and even a nice love-interest Surily. Life goes on as usual until Hummi discovers the rock star in himself and introduces human music into their midst, a revolution of sorts.

The film is replete with references from contemporary urban life, what with the birds watching TV, dating, their lingo and what’s more, following and competing in a musical competition called Bird Idol! Not only that, the competition itself is a spoof of present-day reality TV with its joker judges, fake sirens and made-up dramas. It makes for an interesting viewing experience, laughing at oneself mirrored in the other.

The film is trendy and one cannot help but notice the ‘freshness’ of the dubbing, voices, lines, accents and lingo, all put together. It brings to the fore the importance of sound, dialogue and voices in a visual medium. Thematically it offers nothing newer than any age-old Hindi pot-boiler. But dressed in cool, colourful 2 D animation and put in the context of birds this youthful film does catch attention and proves enjoyable despite a staid plot, lengthy narrative and a tad too many songs.

The film really says nothing new but it is the fashion in which it says is rather so. Compared to the sub-standard mythological sagas that pass around in animation, Bird Idol, attempts to do something contemporary, borrowing from everyday reality and placing its characters in a real modern-day human world. The last film that tried to do something like that was Anurag Kashyap’s Return of Hanuman.

The animation of the film is hardly comparable to its Hollywood counterparts but in view of the stuff dished out by Indian animation industry it is quite an eyeful. An emphasis on bright colours and general pretty-ness comes in handy to make the viewer experience worth it. Nothing superlative but surely a much-required fledgling step towards it.

The film boasts of popular singers who have lent their voices like Shaan, Kailash Kher and even Juhi Chawla. For a film revolving around music, the lack of publicity for the songs is surprising. And that might do the film quite some disservice. It is questionable how much it will endear to the sensibility of today’s children, given its limited breadth and visual appeal. However, the attempt it makes to break free of traditional ‘safe’ mythological animation stories in itself is worthy of applause. Pleasant surprise indeed.