16th
July, 2006
DAVID
ADAMS
Over
the Hedge (G)
In a word:
Almost
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ANIMAL
BEHAVIOUR : Verne the turtle and some of the furry
stars of DreamWorks' Over the Hedge.
"The
story’s a little too basic and the characterisations
a little too shallow to allow us to warm to them
as we did to, say, Lightning McQueen and friends
from the recent Pixar hit Cars..."
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Over
the Hedge is one of those movies that comes close yet
doesn’t quite achieve what it sets out to do. The story’s
a little too basic and the characterisations a little too
shallow to allow us to warm to them as we did to, say, Lightning
McQueen and friends from the recent Pixar hit Cars
or even, although to a lesser extent, the stars of DreamWorks’
previous film Shark Tale. Penned as a satire of the
consumer culture in America, the movie hammers the message
home (and, rest assured, the US ain’t the only country
where wastefulness is an issue), but does little else. The
story centres on a group of woodland animals who, having just
emerged from hibernation, are living a peaceful, rustic existence
in communion with nature (as woodland animals should) until
they are led astray by RJ, a racoon voiced by Bruce Willis
who has a very big and bearlike reason for collecting as much
food as possible as quickly as he can. His quest for food
leds RJ to convince the other, naive animals - who were, until
his arrival, led by a very mild-mannered turtle called Verne
(voiced by Garry Shandling) - to leave their food gathering
in the woods and instead head for the rubbish bins of the
suburbs lying just over the hedge. Alongside the lessons on
wastefulness, the animals learn much about the value of friendship
and family. There’s a few mildly amusing scenes but
this film fails to grab the heartstrings in the way the best
of the new genre of CGI animation films does. Sadly, unlike
in Madagascar where some of the supporting cast (and
yes, I’m thinking of the penguins), stole the show,
there’s no-one to come to the rescue of this movie and
lift it above the run-of-the-mill.
SEE
THE SIGHT ON THE SCREEN ARCHIVES FOR MORE...
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