Product Description

The whole world is looking for a hero, and it's up to a little pigeon named Valiant to step up and bravely serve his country. Valiant (Ewan McGregor) and his fine, feathered friends take to the sky on a wing and a prayer to prove that it's not your wingspan but the size of your spirit that truly counts. Together this rag-tag squadron of birdbrains engages in hilarious aerial adventures at a spitfire pace. From the first bumbling day of basic training through the final feather-raising mission, the flock of comical characters swoops their way toward victory. From the producer of SHREK and SHREK 2, VALIANT delivers stunning animation, a top-flight voice cast, and an action-packed story loaded with laughs. It's a soaring family comedy that truly earns its wings.~

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18592 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-12-13
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 76 minutes

Amazon.com
A host of great British thespians, from Ewan MacGregor to John Cleese, lend their voices to Valiant, a computer-animated bird's-eye-view of World War II. Valiant (MacGregor, Big Fish, Down With Love), though but a small pigeon, is determined to join the homing pigeon brigade and do his part to help win the war. He and a handful of other misfits are assembled into a motley squad and suddenly find themselves thrust into combat with the responsibility of delivering a crucial message. Unfortunately, the villainous Von Talon (Tim Curry, The Rocky Horror Picture Show), a Nazi falcon, intends to tear them to feathers over the English Channel. Aside from some delightful voice work from Ricky Gervais (The Office) as a filthy but cunning pigeon, there's not much to recommend about Valiant. The story is clunky, cliche-ridden, and underdeveloped; the design is charmless and inexpressive; the characters are so generic that even a cast as talented as Jim Broadbent (Topsy-Turvy, Iris), Hugh Laurie (House), and John Hurt (1984, The Elephant Man) can do little to make them anything but bland stereotypes from a long-exhausted movie genre. Overall, poorly conceived and clumsily executed. --Bret Fetzer

LEONARD MALTIN, ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT
"Just like its leading character, Valiant has both heart and humor."

THELMA ADAMS, US WEEKLY
"A family-friendly charmer with cute little birdies!"

Customer Reviews

good movie for kids
It is a good movie for the young and young at heart. It was a joy to watch.

bor-ring!
Hi well to start i really hated this movie. Well it was boring, gross, and well above all i just well didn't like it that much. (Or at all for that matter.) Well I guess some people may like it but I don't. Well gotta go hope this was helpful Brooke

No better than fair for adults, but my children liked it a lot.

This is an animated adventure comedy about heroic homing pigeons who are fighting for freedom during WW2.

Because the standard of animated films is getting so high, these films have to be very good indeed to impress adults. I thought it was OK the first time I watched it with my children, though no better than that. However, as I write this review my children are currently watching it for the third time at their request. Holding the attention of a pair of five year olds for the length of even a short film (it's about 76 minutes) is quite an achievement.

The title character is a tiny pigeon, voiced by Ewan McGregor, who is determined to be a hero. He joins the Royal Homing Pigeon service, and finds himself serving with a band of misfits who have to get messages through in the face of the german falcons.

The cast and plot takes the mickey out of many war stories, and fans of British wartime comedies such as Blackadder goes Forth, 'Allo 'Allo, and especially "It ain't half hot, Mum" will recognise characters from these shows reincarnated as pigeons. If you've never watched any British comedies set in World War II, think of the stock characters in Hogan's Heroes or even serious American war films and the same point will still largely apply.

The voice cast, which also includes Hugh Laurie, Ricky Gervais, Tim Curry, and John Cleese, do a professional and sometimes very amusing job of recreating all the wartime film stereotypes.

Yes, of course they're stereotypes - that's the whole point of the joke, in taking the mickey out of the stereotypes.

At the very end of the film shows a short written statment is displayed about the true history of animal bravery during world war 2, which I found strangely moving.

I don't think this film would have been great value for money if bought at the original full price. However, having initially rented it, and then on establishing that my children liked it, put it on the list to buy when it became available cheaply, I'm happy that the pleasure they gained from watching it did justify the relatively limited outlay.