Wednesday, February 07, 2018

In the Live-Action 'Woody Woodpecker' Film, Detective Lassiter Feuds with the Notorious Eponymous Character

As a cartoon character, Woody Woodpecker isn’t that much loved.  He has garnered notoriety for being an insufferable, provocative jerk and his obnoxious laughter.  In small dosages, I think he’s benign.  But after a while, he can really get under your skin.  Hence, I didn’t think a live-action feature-length Woody Woodpecker film was a good idea.

Still, it somehow got made.  And I somehow decided to watch it.

In it, big-shot city lawyer Lance Walters (Timothy Omundson) takes his girlfriend, Vanessa (Thaila Ayala), and son from a previous marriage, Tommy (Graham Verchere), to go camping in the property he inherited near the Pine Grove forest, which he intends to build an investment house on.  However, it’s near the home of the hyper-active, mischievous Woody Woodpecker (voiced by Eric Bauza).  While Tommy becomes friends with him, a feud erupts between Lance and the annoying anthropomorphic bird.
As a Woody Woodpecker film, it’s surprisingly not detestable.  Probably because – largely due to the goodwill he built as Detective Carlton Lassiter in Psych – Omundson’s presence and participation in the movie made watching it tolerable.  It’s still pretty bad though.  It’s stupid, bland, unfunny, and clichéd.  Remember the mediocre Yogi Bear live-action film back in 2010?  It’s as if this Woody Woodpecker movie was created in an attempt to ride on Yogi Bear.  Only that, it got made many years too late.

It’s a pity that Timothy Omundson was able to star in this movie, but could only cameo in Psych: The Movie (due to a stroke).

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