A thoroughly entertaining little fable...

Rating: 7/10 (4 January 2007)

...about the value of friendship and belonging, "Over the Hedge" is perhaps the first genuine animation notch in Dreamworks' belt. My suspicion is that the source material, Michael Fry's popular comic strip, is the reason. The characters are carefully delineated and superbly rendered in a clean animation style that very much reminds one of the comic, and the story is family-friendly yet still retains an adult wit about it. Pointed barbs are thrown at consumerism and suburbia amidst an otherwise simple tale that focuses on a raccoon named R.J. (voiced to perfection by Bruce Willis) who has to replace the food stores of a threatening bear (Nick Nolte, chewing the scenery with vocal intonations of implied violence) by conning an unlikely pack of foragers into helping him raid the cornucopia of human society "over the hedge." Ample vocal assistance is provided by the likes of William Shatner, Allison Janney, Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara (do these two ever work separately?), Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, and the wonderful Wanda Sykes, along with a host of others.
It works, and works well. Dreamworks has, I think, come up with its first animated feature (yes, even beyond "Shrek") that compares favorably with the best of Pixar. I've yet to purchase "Cars," (although I did see both in the theater) last summer's animated competitor to "Over the Hedge," on DVD, and so cannot make a back-to-back judgment, but I know it's going to be difficult to decide which film has true legs (i.e. which one will I be most eager to share with grandchildren) and which one will sit on the shelf. Hopefully both will have their days of rapt attention in the player, but I suspect that anthropomorphic animals will win out over cartoon automobiles.