Film Reviews

Over The Hedge

• Rating:
• Director: Tim Johnson, Karey Kirkpatrick.
• Starring: Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, William Shatner.
• Details: US. 83mins, G.

When RJ (Willis), a raccoon, is forced to scavenge food for an evil bear (Nick Nolte) before he wakes up from hibernation, he ropes in a trusting family of animals that live near encroaching suburbia. The ragbag collection of animals include Hammy (Carell) the squirrel, Ozzie (Shatner) the possum, Lou (Eugene Levy) the porcupine and their leader Verne (Shandling) the tortoise. Tricking them into thinking he is helping them gather food for the up and coming winter, RJ persuades them to pass through the hedge into a garden and steal the human's food. However, the woman who lives in the house is an animal hater and employs vicious vermin exterminator Dwayne (Thomas Hayden Church) to kill them. With lines like "Okay, we gotta watch out for the traps. They're here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, a big one over here, here, here, here, here and a few more here. Everyone got that?" Over The Hedge is the best fun anyone can have in the cinema this month. Carefully navigating the fine line between adult and child humour, everyone will be entertained by this superb piece of animation and parents won't mind being dragged along to this. What Over The Hedge has, and that the majority of recent animation hasn't is character; every animal has his/her own voice and idiosyncrasies, which give the overall feeling that a lot of love and thought went into the making of this film. And the lines keep coming - the posh Persian housecat is proud of his father's beauty and has great admiration for his flat face - "He was so beautiful he could hardly breathe".

Review by Gavin Burke