Over the Hedge

Generally, I find animated films revolving around some sort of needlessly complicated journey—inevitably proving to be entirely avoidable by the end of the film—tiresome and even grating. But, this time, something interesting happened on the way to the candy store. Does “Over the Hedge” disprove my theory? Probably not… especially since it’s not much of a “theory” to begin with. Actually, it’s more like a loose set of tenuous observations that are sometimes contradicted, which is to say it’s not a theory at all.

The film opens on a vending machine. We see only the hand trying to reach up into it. Turns out it’s a raccoon who goes by the name of R.J. (Bruce Willis). R.J.’s a scavenger and a troublemaker. Living on the outskirts of nowhere in particular, near a local roadside stop, he has become keenly observant of humans and their ways, means and indulgences—chiefly junk food. Nearby hibernates a bear, Vincent (Nick Nolte). When a bag of junk food gets stuck in the vending machine, R.J. slinks over to Vincent’s cave to steal his supply. Not knowing wisely when to pick up and go, R.J. tries to pry a canister of Spuddies from Vincent’s paws.

Needless to say, the food R.J. piled onto a wagon rolls down the side of the hill and into the road, only to be crushed by a bus. Now R.J. has a bigger problem. Vincent wants his food back, all of it, in a week. How? Just when you think animals don’t need to be encroached by sprawling suburban developments, there happens to be one nearby—a junk food goldmine. It’s just beyond a seemingly endless hedge—introduced in a slight parody of the monolith shot in “2001”—behind which resides a small community of wild animals including a neurotic squirrel aptly named Hammy (Steve Carell), a “naturally tentative” turtle called Vern (Garry Shandling), Stella (Wanda Sykes) the skunk, a porcupine family, and others.

With their help, R.J. figures he can scour the suburb for all the food he’s to return to Vincent. Though, it raises the question, and the film isn’t dumb enough to miss it, “Why go back to Vincent and the roadside vending machine when you have a paradise surrounded by an endless supply of junk food?” A word about the chips, though. In a comical scene where R.J. first initiates his furry comrades into the world of semi-perishable consumables, he cracks open a bag of nacho cheese-flavored chips (Note: Not a single real product placement could I find in the movie.). Upon releasing the aroma, the cheese powder gushes out like the product of a gas grenade. Cut to a wide shot of Earth, and an orange mushroom cloud sprouting forth from it.

There are some great visual gags in the movie which, along with the lively characterizations, keep the story interesting enough, though not great: Personalized license plates on gargantuan SUV’s, a John Tesh CD found among the loads of trash, fireflies that substitute as idea lightbulbs clicking on over an animal’s head when a scheme burbles forth in their mind. The grandest scheme, in fact, involves a bit of humor set up early in the film. Hammy almost downs a can of heavily caffeinated energy drink (yet another pop culture reference) and R.J. stops him, noting that caffeine is the last thing Hammy needs. Later, the caffeine comes back into play when they need to turn off numerous traps set by Dwayne “The Verminator” LaFontaine (Thomas Haden Church). Hammy downs the entire can, and (POSSIBLE SPOILER) just when most animated films would show the character going into sudden overdrive, the scene cuts away to the world again. Thanks to the earlier chip incident, we’re hanging in suspense for a second, primed to think, “Uh oh. What now?” The Earth slowly grinds to a halt. The next shot, which I won’t spoil, left the audience howling in laughter.

The movie isn’t exceptional or particularly innovative. The layered levels of humor to keep adults and children interested are all there, but I think with a slightly cockeyed attitude relative to the usual execution. Consider Verne’s question as they pass by one of the gigantic SUV’s, “How many humans fit in there?” R.J. astutely observes, “Usually one.” Think about it for a second. We’ve heard endless appeals to everything from needing room for the kids to having space for more groceries than are generally needed to feed a family, but how often do you ever see more than one person occupying such a vehicle on the freeway? Also note the scene in which, while raiding a resident’s refrigerator, the feral infiltrators accidentally switch on the TV and out blasts the ubiquitous “THX” sound—barely awakening the owner of the large house. The insinuation could be that the houses have grown so uselessly huge that there’s enormous space between the living room and the upper bedroom across which the noise can hardly be heard. At least that’s what I drew from it, anyway.

Oddly, not one person laughed when one of the suburbanite adults admonishes her children for freaking out, instructing them to go inside, “Turn on the TV and calm down.” Are parents really that oblivious, or devoid of a sense of humor, when it comes to their generation’s penchant for relying on television as a babysitter?

There are also some fun peripheral characterizations: One involves a cat, Tiger, seduced by the skunk in disguise as a distraction to acquire Tiger’s radio collar that disarms one of the alarm systems to let him in or out of the house. The Persian feline, when separated from his stinky minx, screams an homage to Marlon Brando—recognizable only to some audience members. You can see some of these jokes coming, but they’re executed with enough enthusiasm and charm by the voice actors that they’re still pretty effective at eliciting laughter.

Another, equally humorous character is a rottweiler in one of the yards. Many such animated movies, following the same formula of a journey to recover a necessary item or items with an impending deadline, tend to portray dogs as either entirely malevolent/bullyish or abundantly stupid. As a prior scene involving Ozzie the possum (William Shatner) establishes the fact that humans cannot understand animals but they can understand each other, we infer that the rottweiler’s barks are translated as, “PLAY?!” The easily excitable dog is attracted to anything that moves, repeating, “PLAY? PLAY! PLAAAAY!” ad nauseum to drive home the point that the big lunk just wants to jostle around, gleefully ignorant of his own strength and seeming menace. You have to see it to get the tone, but it’s certainly a more perceptive adaptation of dogspeak than I’ve seen in any other canine anthropomorphization.

The one problem with the movie is that, while these scenes are all hilarious vignettes, the overall narrative feels, at times, less than coherent. We get lost in the momentary laughs and then return to a movie that’s short of memorable. I’m not asking for an epic adventure, and I do think the movie’s entertaining in its duration. Where it lacks ingenuity and cohesive storytelling, it satiates with manic energy, oddball observation and witty humor that isn’t dependent exclusively on animals imbued with human psychological motivations (e.g. Vern’s jealousy of R.J.’s crowd appeal), but also structured on clever application of human language to communicate plausible nonhuman thoughts to us.

Over the Hedge • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 • Running Time: 96 minutes • MPAA Rating: PG for some rude humor and mild comic action. • Distributed by DreamWorks SKG