By Peter Hartlaub
San Francisco Chronicle
We’ve seen some audacious product placement in movies before: Joe Pesci ordering a Subway sandwich in “Lethal Weapon 2”; Tom Hanks giving AOL stock a boost in “You’ve Got Mail”; a 119-minute Google advertisement disguised as a feature film called “The Internship” …
But movie audiences have never been sucker punched by the fist of embedded marketing with the force that we see at the end of “Free Birds.” Warning: After a three paragraph grace period, this review will include a spoiler of the final scene of the movie. And this spoiler (the contents, not the revealed plot points) may ruin your day.
”Free Birds” is the kind of factory-churned animated movie that seems to be multiplying in recent years. It sounds fun and clever in theory, featuring a turkey named Reggie who is pardoned by the president, then travels back in time to thwart the first Thanksgiving meal, presumably saving his species from centuries of slaughter.