This was horrible.

Rating: 2/10 (18 November 2006)

I don't normally rate films so low, but this was a major disappointment. I was not impressed by the trailers, but was encouraged by all the positive reviews. I rented it with some expectation of a good time.
This film is paced for four year-olds with ADHD. There is a chase or a crazy action sequence or just characters darting around the scene every 10 seconds. You can hardly tell what's going on, and you never learn anything about any of the characters. By the end of the movie, I could only remember a couple of their names, even.
The 'emotional' scenes that the movie attempts do not work at ALL, because you know nothing about who these animals are, what their history is, or what relation they have to each other. They are just a random bunch of animals, each with his own, irritating and frenetically-paced shtick, that live together for some reason. RJ is this raccoon with no back story at all, and the film starts with this random scene where he is in front of a vending machine, and then suddenly tries to steal a bear's food. Who is the bear? How do they know each other? Why is this raccoon living alone? What happened to his family? Does he have ANY personality beyond trying to get food ??
And when did it suddenly become OK to make movies that are this crazy and don't bother to tell you anything? The other thing that is SO annoying here is that all the animals have to exaggerate every word and facial expression to the point where they are just obnoxious, hyperactive, flailing, face-stretching ciphers. The human characters are even worse and do nothing but scream a lot, gesture wildly, run around, and again twist every facial nuance into grotesque overacting. What happened to characters being believable or even close to realistic and having normal conversations?
It is just stupid and this is not what animation is supposed to be. A *little* overacting is sometimes necessary to get the mood across, but this has gotten ridiculous. It was a little annoying in The Road to El Dorado, Treasure Planet, and some of the newer films, but it is taken to unbelievable extremes here where every character is doing it constantly.
This movie was so irritating I almost shut it off. The only thing that kept it going was an occasional joke that was funny. Otherwise this was totally stupid and I would not recommend it if you are the type who enjoys a NORMAL movie that has actual character development, drama, well-timed humor, good story pacing, etc.
There are too many great animated films out there to waste your time on this one.