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Other characters and situations could have been more developed, too. For example, one of the mice we meet in the French Resistance goes absolutely nuts whenever he hears the word "sabotage"—he grabs a matchstick from his belt in each hand, lights them, and leaps around the room like Daffy Duck in his earlier, loonier years, only a bit more psychotic. Our first encounter with this character promises to send the film into truly wacky territory, but there's no real pay-off in the scenes that follow. Similarly, one of the birds undergoes a change of heart that feels sudden and obligatory; it feels like this change was imposed on the script, rather than something that grows naturally out of the bird's character.

There is still much to enjoy here, though, from the note-perfect newsreels produced by the "Department of Pigeon Propaganda" to the dark, explosive sequence in which the plane carrying the pigeons into France is hit by enemy fire. (The film's formal, stylized rendering of humans and their vehicles is actually somewhat reminiscent of the propaganda cartoons Walt Disney made during the war.) I also got a kick out of the old bird in Valiant's hometown whose peg leg consists of a pencil stub. Valiant is nowhere near as good as Chicken Run (which similarly mixed avian puns with British memories of the war), and it's not as clever as Robots (the last cartoon to star McGregor as the voice of an eager young lad who leaves the nest, as it were, and sets out to make his mark on the world). But for parents who are tired of the hip, stupid bombast of films like Shark Tale, it'll do.

Talk About It

1. Valiant says it's not the size of your wingspan, but the size of your spirit, that counts. Do you agree? How do people treat Valiant because of his size? Does being small actually give him an advantage? If you are small for your age, how has this worked in your favor?
   
   
2. Bugsy says he wants to go back to Trafalgar Square, and he doesn't want to be involved in the war because he didn't make the machines with which the war is fought. Valiant replies, "But we didn't make Trafalgar Square either. And where do we go when the bombs start falling there?" If you were Valiant, how would you have answered Bugsy? If you were Bugsy, how would you have answered Valiant? What responsibilities do we have, to our society or to our world, simply because it was made by other people?
   
   
3. What do you think of the British practice of awarding medals to animals? Is it absurd? Is it a way of honoring creation? Recognizing a debt? Does it require us to treat animals as if they were humans? Does it help us to acknowledge our connectedness to God's creation?

The Family Corner

Valiant is rated G. Very young children might be scared by some of the battle scenes—bullet holes appear in a plane's fuselage, and falcons pursue the pigeons at several points along the way. One pigeon is kept prisoner in a birdcage littered with bones. There is a fair bit of body humor, in the form of burps, smelly armpits and at least one bit of flatulence, most of which are due to the character Bugsy. Bugsy also makes some va-va-va-voom remarks to the female characters he meets, as well as a gratuitous remark about prayers never being answered, but this last one zips by so quickly most kids might miss it.

Photos © Copyright Warner Brothers

© Peter T. Chattaway 2005, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

Is Disney trying to encourage young moviegoers to dream about joining the military? Their latest CGI feature, Valiant, celebrates the derring-do of a pigeon (voiced by Ewan McGregor) who aspires to join the Royal Homing Pigeon Service (RHPS) during World War II. Other talents lending their voices include John Cleese, Tim Curry, Ricky Gervais, and Hugh Laurie.

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