List Price:   $19.99 Price:   $17.49 find out more information

Buy posters from this movie

Based on a comic strip of which I am unfamiliar (having largely given up on the format, with the exception of “Doonesbury” and “The Boondocks,” since “Bloom Country” and “Dondi” shuffled off this mortal coil), the film centers on a mismatched group of animal pals voiced by the requisite celebrity cast. The leader is Verne (Garry Shandling), a cautious and neurotic turtle and the others include hyperactive squirrel Hammy (Steve Carell), wise-cracking skunk Stella (Wanda Sykes), a porcupine clan led by Lou and Penny (Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara) and the father-daughter possum pairing of Ozzie and Heather (William Shatner and Avril Lavigne–apparently they must be Canadian possum). As the film opens, their hibernation has come to an end and Verne is already imploring them to begin foraging for food to store away for next winter. They quickly discover that may be trickier than usual–during the winter, a subdivision has been built around them and the woods where they once gathered nuts and berries have been replaced with grossly overscaled homes, lawn gnomes and a block president (Allison Janney) who seems to take any suggestion of nature as a personal insult that is to be dealt with in the harshest manner possible. After one dismal excursion beyond the enormous hedge that has gone up around the area, Verne and the others are dismayed–how will they survive the present–let alone next winter–when their food supply has been plowed under?

In comes a slick, fast-talking raccoon named RJ (Bruce Willis) who explains to them that the suburban sprawl is actually a blessing in disguise and beyond the hedge is an immense bounty of food that will allow them to stock up a year’s worth of supplies in less than a week. Verne is, of course, mistrustful of this stranger but once RJ introduces the others to the joys of nacho chips and soda pop, they are eager to follow his lead and quickly amass a huge amount of food through various clever means–Hammy scares a group of Girl Scouts out of their cookies by pretending to be rabid and Ozzie distracts some picnickers by literally playing possum in the kind of fake death scene that could only be done by William Shatner himself. What the gang doesn’t realize is that RJ does have an ulterior motive to his seemingly selfless aid–he inadvertently destroyed the provisions belonging to ferocious bear Vincent (Nick Nolte) and he plans on stealing what the group has collected in order to save his own skin. Before that can happen, Verne inadvertently destroys the food while trying to return it and the group has to try to steal it all back in one night while avoiding both Vincent and an equally lethal critter killer who dubs himself “the Verminator” (Thomas Haden Church).

All of this develops along the most predictable lines imaginable–even the youngest viewers probably won’t be surprised to discover that the film doesn’t end with RJ being skinned by a bear and the others slowly starving to death as their homes are paved over to make way for another Wal-Mart. When things start to lag, which is often, the filmmakers try to perk things up by throwing in one extraneous action scene after another in which the characters are slammed around or shot into the air for one reason or another–they may be sort of neat on a technical level but they seem to exist only to provide inspiration for the inevitable video game adaptation. Another problem is that while the actors have been typecast well enough–Willis is the slick hipster, Shandling is wildly neurotic, Sykes is brash and bawdy and Nolte is the kind of creature that would tear your head off for taking his goodies–they don’t really bring anything fresh to the table either. Instead of creating a strong script and then finding the right actors to pull it off (as was done with “The Incredibles”), the filmmakers seem to have cast the stars first and then just assumed that their personalities would cover up the relative lack of invention.

These are the same problems that have plagued most of the recent animated films but “Over the Hedge” manages to rise above them simply because it has some bits that are genuinely funny. Many of them come from the Verminator character, a man whose elaborate weaponry is outdone only by his equally florid speaking manner–I like how, after being temporarily fooled by a flamingo lawn ornament, he lashes out with “Curse you, plastic moldsman!” (Thomas Haden Church delivers these lines with such gleeful portentousness that he could easily take over any voice-over work that Patrick Warburton is too busy to tackle.) I also like the character of Tiger (Omid Djalili), a decidedly Germanic housecat who finds himself falling for the disguised Stella–imagine “The Night Porter” as recast with the characters from “Gay Puree.” There are other funny moments throughout, though I suspect that what was clearly designed to be one of the highlights–the hyperactive Hammy saving the day after ingesting caffeine for the first time–might have come off better if the same basic joke hadn’t already been seen a few months ago in “Hoodwinked.”

Look, I’m not going to try and convince you that “Over the Hedge” is a brilliant treasure that will enchant young and old alike–even at its best, it never comes close to equaling the heart, humor and solid storytelling of even the weakest Pixar efforts. However, it has its heart in the right place, it has a reasonable amount of funny moments and viewers over the age of 12 won’t feel as completely alienated while watching it as they were during “Ice Age 2" or “Curious George.” In fact, I can even see myself checking the film out again when it makes its way to DVD–especially if the bonus features includes both the footage of Steve Carell recording his lines and William Shatner and Avril Lavigne encountering each other for the first time. If you do go, however, be sure to stay for the end credits–the discussion of “The Wrath of Khan” alone is pretty much worth the price of admission by itself.

 del.icio.us    
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=14328&reviewer=389
originally posted: 05/19/06 14:21:52
 printer-friendly format