Yellowbird Movie Review

As you should know (because you follow my blog and me on social media), I attended CTNx a few weeks ago. In my recap post I shared that I got the chance to attend an advance screening of Dominique Christian De Vita's 3D animated feature Yellowbird.

To give you a brief synopsis, Yellowbird is about an orphan bird who befriends a ladybug and does not fly or have any desire of exploring the world beyond their niche in a forest some where in the world. An event occurs and it is required of this orphan bird to mentally and physically leave his comfort zone. As he does so, he finds himself int he middle of a situation and ends up leading a flock of migrating birds to Africa.

Christian De Vita, Seth Green and Yvette Nicole Brown were all at the screening and engaged in a Q&A after the screening. Monfery spoke about how they handled the texturing of the feathers. I think of all the movies about birds (Happy Feet, Rio, Surfs Up Penguins of Madagascar etc) Yellowbird definitely holds its own.

To be honest although I enjoyed this movie I do feel that the storytelling was a little weak. In the most simplest way it is about being accepted. We have seen many stories about a protagonist's journey of acceptance and I feel that is why it is important to reinvent how these stories are told.

Earnest & Celestine in its simplest depiction is about the unexpected friendship between alleged enemies. How many times have we seen movies with this kind of premise? However, the execution of Earnest & Celestine was refreshing and that is what I feel was lacking in Yellowbird. It is quite comedic but it missed that sparkle of genuine originality.

One of the main things that was a bit unsettling for me was that we didn't know where in africa they were flying to. We know that Africa is a continent made up of many countries yet not one was mentioned. There were visuals that would lead one to believe there were in a specific nation but that is only if you have prior knowledge. I was disappointed that they didn't take this opportunity to make it an educational moment. Overall I still believe Yellowbird is a film worth seeing. It is good to expose yourself and experienve animations outside of the American things we have access to. You can see more about Yellowbird on their Facebook page. Lastly you can watch the trailer below.

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