"Taking over the neighborhood, one snack at a time"

Rating: 6/10 (28 April 2012)

Over the Hedge is another Dreamworks film, with judging by the amount of advertisement and the amount of talent by the voice actors, seemed to deliver. The story starts kind of child-like, but my hopes for the rest of the film were high. I liked the whole modernized vision of how these animals find out how us humans act, and the scene where they were describing what we were doing with the food was a classic. But by the end of the film, the movie seemed to take a shortcut by placing the amount of jokes and fun, but leaving out that emotional bond we get with other films...
I'm not saying the movie was bad, because I thought it was overall cleverly done. But the film doesn't connect to me like others have, and it loses touch by the end. In fact, dare I say it, the movie is forgettable and it's not a groundbreaking animation it's made out to be. Getting that out of the way, I found the execution of the jokes and animation well done! 2007 was around the time when the animation picked up it's speed, by creating landscape that actually looks realistic and adding an insane amount of detail. This was a wonder to look at, and foreshadowed the animation today. The voice acting, too, was also great. I mean, but who wouldn't thought otherwise? Bruce Willis was fantastic as the 'boss' raccoon, and the others did an equally good job. The movie also brings out this message that all revolves around FOOD?! I mean, it's new and original, but even the thought of it is quite silly. Nevertheless, these qualities make the film average but the film had some more potential.
I recommend for kids. The adults will get a kick out of the amount of wit, but they will be disappointed with the lack of emotion the movie contains. If the movie held that, then maybe the film would've been a ground breaker, but now...? I wasn't too impressed. Over the Hedge gets a 6/10.