Featuring the voice of Jason Sudeikis. Rated G. Now playing.

Ah, finally: a kids movie that extols the virtues of bitterness, negativity, and barely controlled rage.

Angry Birds’ sharp-beaked jokes come as a surprise until you find out the writer is Jon Vitti from The Simpsons. In his hands, the unpromising prospect of a yet another movie based on a video game—an app whose heyday is kind of over—becomes funnier than it has any right to be. Sarcastically, subversively funny, and all set within a surprisingly creative universe where three-dimensionally fluffy birds inhabit turquoise beaches and wonky houses that make you think of Dr. Seuss by way of Montego Bay.

Imagine Vitti’s challenge in turning a mindless game that has so little inner logic into a story: integrating not only birds that shoot out of slingshots, spontaneously explode, and launch fireballs out of their asses, but invading green pigs. Somehow, he manages to weave this all into something resembling a plot, centring around Jason Sudeikis’s beautifully embittered Red, a misfit in the shiny-happy bird village who’s ordered to anger-management classes off the top of the movie.

As shown in Sean Penn’s grunting Terence, Josh Gad’s beyond-hyper Chuck, Danny McBride’s dim-witted Bomb, and Peter Dinklage’s not-so-mighty Mighty Eagle, the barbed humour here can only come alive through comedic voicing. Watch antisocial Red try to get rid of Chuck and Bomb by telling them he has “a thing”—by which he means “a desire. Not to hang out with you.”

After the pigs hatch a secret plot to trick the birdbrains and steal their eggs, Red’s cynicism becomes the only thing that can save the island. Forget Disneyfied triumphs of good over evil—here’s a schmuck who is actually celebrated for being pissed off.

Depending where you sit on the happy meter, this—and the odd reference to The Shining and Daft Punk—might please you almost enough to forget the movie is part of a giant marketing machine. And what does all this mean for the Angry Birds franchise? Expect those slingshots to launch like mad again.