Valiant may indeed be a valiant effort.

But it's also a misguided one that flies over an animation no- man's-land where it's unlikely to find armies of kiddy admirers or even platoons of adults receptive to its odd comic take on a stiff- upper-lip British wartime tale.

It's a work of pretty but soulless computer animation that strangely enough attempts to spoof all the cliches of World War II English cinema -- from the dauntless "Battle of Britain" pluckiness of the Brits, to the brash derring-do of RAF airmen, to the tragic melodrama of the European underground resistance.

The story relates the adventures of a scrawny pigeon named Valiant (voiced by Ewan McGregor) who longs to join the Royal Homing Pigeon Service and do its part for the war effort. Homing pigeons actually did play a key role in flying crucial messages during the war, and besides, Valiant knows that chicks dig a bird in uniform.

So Valiant flies off to London, where he joins up and falls under the stern command of a tough drill sergeant (Jim Broadbent) and makes friends with a scruffy con-pigeon named Bugsy (Ricky Gervais).

The rest is a mildly amusing string of misadventures and pratfalls involving a mission to rescue a captive British pigeon named Mercury (John Cleese), who is being tortured by the snidely Gen. Von Talon (Tim Curry), an eye-patched Nazi falcon, and to retrieve a vital D-Day communique from the French Resistance.