(Just Barely) Over The Hedge

Up to the time I decided to write this, I couldn’t figure out whether I liked this movie. It was lunchtime, I was famished, and I chose to watch it while munching on a Burger King Junior Whopper, regular fries and Coke, so maybe I was distracted.

Or maybe it’s because it’s a movie with animated talking animals, and I didn’t take it seriously.

Or maybe after watching some of the more excellent versions of similarly themed movies, I had such high expectations.

Whatever.

I suppose the fact that I couldn’t figure out whether I liked it means – I don’t neither.

So let’s analyze that for a second.

The Hedge, a long wall-shaped bush to us garden ignorants, represents for Verne the turtle, played by Garry Shandling along with a cast of Steve Carell, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner(!), Eugene Levy and others, a major change in their lives. They play animals of course, most of which aren’t native to us tropic folk so I don’t recognize most of them. It’s also based on a comic strip, which again, isn’t available in these parts or at least I’ve not seen one yet.

During a long (must have been very long) hibernation, humans built a suburbs area around their natural forest habitat, forcing them to change their living habits.

At this point you may think this is a movie about learning to adapt to one’s new conditions as I did, but you’d be wrong. More on this later.

Surprisingly, it’s a movie about family. RJ, the wily squirrel (I think), is a loner, and falls into disfavor with Vincent (Nick Nolte), a mean bear, when he manages to destroy the food Vincent collected for his winter sleep. Vincent gives him a week to replace it, and under the threat of death (somewhat PG dont you think?), RJ manipulates Verne and crew to help him by convincing them he’s teaching them to adapt into the new world they’re in.

Verne, ever the conservative, resists RJ’s attempts, and later on confuses this with his need to maintain leadership and compares himself with the forwardthinking RJ. This forms the conflict in the story, along with RJ’s surprise at how the group had come to rely on and admire him, factors which eventually lead him onto the right path.

These are the movie’s highlights, and the endearing parts as well. RJ converts from just another thieving, smart alecky rascal into a family member, it’s leader and one responsible for the family at that. Verne’s assuring him that if he had asked for help to begin with, they would have, and he didn’t have to trick them, is a revelation – a completely alien concept to a certified loner. This, along with the fact that the ‘family’ is actually a hodgepodge of different animals bonded together by choice are the parts I remember most.

So where does the problem start? The movie, as we do, loves to take potshots at our wasteful ways, but offers no solution to it either. Verne and company need to adapt to their new situation – terrible as it may seem – and even if it’s worlds apart from the foraging that their used to, they still need to get with the program to survive.

That whole scene smacks of the ‘cuteness factor’, as it gives the movie a chance to show humans buying, consuming, praying to, getting rid of, delivering, ordering, storing, everything – food. We’ve always known how ridiculous it’s become, and this merely puts a spotlight to it.

But going back to foraging through the forest, inspite of the movie’s romanticizing it, is out of the question. It’s obvious (at least to me) that the gang has to learn to steal from humans and rummage through trashcans if they want to survive. They’ve no choice. So in effect, the need for cuteness caused a situation which the movie had to resolve, but couldn’t and didn’t.

If you aren’t as needly about details as I am, watch Over The Hedge just because it’s a quick 83 minutes of fun. Check out Hammie – the not so bright but very fast critter (told you I wasn’t familiar with them), and how RJ gets him to do his will. Check out RJ himself, and his survival / manipulative skills that allow him to get through life without need of others. Check out Verne and company, and the interesting (but wrong) coming out of Wanda Syke’s Skunk and the Persian Cat. Why not look for Avril Lavigne in there somewhere as well? She plays Heather, a Possum, who along with Ozzie played by William Shatner, play a very minor father-daughter subplot that pretty much falls by the wayside.

But if you’ve come to expect perfection in the stories and sub-stories of other animated movies as Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, then this one just barely makes it over the hedge.

[tag]over the hedge, bruce willis, william shatner, avril lavigne, nick nolte, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, Wanda Sykes, [/tag]

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