Not one of the strongest CGI animated adventures, but there are inferior efforts from DreamWorks Animation

Rating: 7/10 (19 December 2008)

For a while now, I have been aware of this movie's existence, but for a long time after its release in 2006, I didn't pay much attention to it, and didn't know much about it. I knew it was a CGI animated feature, another one with anthropomorphic animals, and it obviously involved a hedge, but that was about it. I guess I also knew it was from DreamWorks Animation (a company which has produced some films I've been impressed with, some films which haven't impressed me as much, and some I've yet to see). Those things were all I knew about "Over the Hedge" until this week, when I finally rented it. I wasn't expecting to be blown away, and could have ended up not liking it much at all, but for me, it turned out to be somewhere in between. In other words, it's pretty good.
One spring, a bunch of animals in a forest wake up after their winter hibernation and find a giant hedge, which wasn't there before, and also find that food is scarce and their forest is much smaller than it used to be! On the other side of the hedge, there is a new suburban neighbourhood. The animals soon meet a raccoon named RJ, who tells them how they can get food from the neighbourhood, and soon takes them to the other side to do just that. Stealing food from the humans turns out to be a tad dangerous for the animals, especially with two main human foes - Gladys, the smug, short-tempered president of the local homeowners' association, and Dwayne, a gifted exterminator! In addition to that, these animals don't know the real reason why RJ is doing this! Recently, he accidentally destroyed the food collection of a bear named Vincent, and has until the next full moon the replace it, or else Vincent will eat him instead!
As usual, I have no complaints about the animation. It's just gorgeous here, with the trees and a usually crisp blue sky. However, another thing you might want to know about is the humour in this film, which may not be quite as appealing. The movie may have a bit more for kids than adults in the humour department, as it is sometimes maybe a tad too simplistic for adults (personally, I sometimes didn't care much for the antics of Hammy, a hyperactive squirrel, especially his first line, about having to go "wee-wee"), but I definitely wouldn't say the humour is strictly for kids. There were definitely times when I laughed (even if the laughs usually weren't very hard), including some of the situations the animals get into on the other side of the hedge, some scenes with Gladys and her hostile reaction to things, and I guess I was sometimes mildly amused by Hammy. Of course, this movie is not all about the humour, and it's also a decent adventure story, with some serious and sometimes mildly touching moments, for which it scores more points in my book. So, while "Over the Hedge" is not exactly "Shrek" or "Shrek 2", two of the more popular movies from DreamWorks Animation, it's still a reasonable family flick overall, despite a bit of PG humour.