Great acting, story and characters. A fun(nny) animated movie

Rating: Null/10 (1 January 2007)

Over the Hedge's story centers around a raccoon named R.J. (Bruce Willis). R.J. needs to give back everything he tried to steal from a bear, but ended up losing and he only has a week to do it. R.J. makes a list of everything that he lost before he sets out. After traveling a bit he stumbles upon a close knit group of animals who just found half of their forest and most of their food supplies gone and a suburban neighborhood in it's place. R.J. sees an opportunity and after introducing them to the human food recruits them to help him regain all the lost food for the bear. Of course he doesn't tell them this, they think that they are gathering food for themselves. But the groups leader, a turtle named Verne (Gary Shandling) has his doubts.
The main reason that I wanted to see this movie was because of the voice talent, Bruce Willis and William Shatner in particular. I have never seen a movie or T.V. episode with those two in it that I didn't like and they are among my favorite actors. They did not disappoint me; they preformed their parts well. Also the rest of the cast did an exceptional job. This is a movie that you know is going to be fun to watch just by looking at it. It has clever humor, good acting and an engaging plot. The animation is also great. If you decide to see it, rent the DVD and check out the special features explaining how they did some of the animation. It is very fascinating. The writing was very good for an animated family film. The writers make up for the sometimes formulaic characters by making the plot unpredictable and even exciting at parts.
This movie isn't without its problems. It has many jokes that kids might find funny (which is perfectly fine if you are bringing your kids) but will make older people roll their eyes. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these jokes being in thereit's an animated movie so its main audience is going to be kids but I wish they would cut back on them. They never had those jokes in Looney Tunes or those old cartoons. For the most part adults can watch old cartoons eye rolling free. But new cartoons spoon-feed kids bizarre, unoriginal, overused, stupid and unfunny jokes that drive any sane person nuts. That was just a rant about recent animation in general and is not really directed at this movie by the way. I don't care for some of the humor styles of today.
But overall this movie remains entertaining and was really one of the best animated films of the year. Being based on a comic strip that was a satirical look at the human lifestyle this movie has quite a few jokes that many people will give a guilty if not hearty chuckle to. I highly recommend it especially to families.
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