Paramount Pictures / DreamWorks Starring: Bruce Willis, William Shatner, Steve Carrell
Directed By: Tim Johnson, Karey Kirkpatrick
Rated: PG
Paramount Pictures / DreamWorks
Not too long ago, the release of a new computer-animated movie was quite an event. After seeing Toy Story, a new Pixar film meant that I would be making a trip to the theater. After seeing Shrek, DreamWorks joined that list of "must-see" animation houses. But after a while, everything starts getting to be old-hat. These days, I generally wait until the DVD comes out for the CG stuff, and stick to live-action films in the theaters.
Meghan wanted to see Over the Hedge the week it opened, and I kind of nixed the idea. Then, over Memorial Day weekend, my nephew Timmy wanted to see it with us, so I gave in. I'm actually glad I did.
The story follows RJ (Willis), a raccoon who gets caught stealing food from a hibernating bear, Lenny (Nick Nolte). When the food is destroyed by a passing truck, Lenny gives RJ just a week to gather up all of the items and return them to the cave. RJ finds an advertisment that shows all of the things he needs--and he knows that the world of the humans is the place to find them.
When he reaches civilization, RJ stumbles upon a group of animals who have just come out of hibernation and are completely puzzled by the giant hedge that has appeared out of nowhere while they slept. Peeking through the hedge, they see a whole new world that wasn't there before. Led by Verne the turtle (Garry Shandling), the group consists of an opossum (Shatner, who hams it up when playing dead) and his daughter; a skunk (brilliantly voiced by Wanda Sykes); a hyperactive squirrel (Carrell); and a porcupine (Eugene Levy) and his family. All of these animals are gatherers and are looking for food, so RJ sees an opportunity to use them to gather the things he needs to appease Lenny. It becomes a caper film at this point with the animals outsmarting the dumb humans (including an exterminator voiced by Thomas Hayden Church), and the less-savvy domestic animals.
One of the first nice things that comes to mind with regard to this film--and it's high praise from me, since I'm kind of jaded by the whole CG animation thing at this point--is that it doesn't show the kind of indifference that I've seen in a lot of other CG offerings of late. It seems to me that the studios are only now discovering that the technology won't carry the film if the story is one-dimensional and stale. I thought that Over the Hedge--while it won't exactly win any awards for stellar literary achievement--was actually a neat little story. With suburban sprawl so rampant everywhere you go these days, it's kind of cool to see a hypothetical view of human incursion into nature from the animals' point of view. The film isn't preachy at all (don't worry)--but it does hint at the kinds of effects humans have on the indigenous life forms when they systematically remove all of the threes and greenery in favor of tract housing. And, from a human point of view, it's great that the central "villianess" of the film is the head of a comically strict homeowner's association (the bane of all of us who happen to live in newer developments).
Over the Hedge is certainly not up to par with Toy Story 1 and 2 or the first Shrek--it's more predictable than those films--but it is a funny, cute way to spend an hour and a half.
Bottom line: A well-animated, funny little film that's definitely worth seeing.