I was never terribly fond of the comic strip this movie is based on, so I didn't enter with great expectations. It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise that, despite a few significant flaws, the movie is lots of fun.
The story is about a group of animals who awake from hibernation to find that their forest has been cut in half by a giant hedge, on the other side of which is suburbia, in the form of a new housing development.
The leader of this family of animals is a turtle named Verne (voiced by Garry Shandling), who is by nature cautious; he would like to ignore this new development and continue life as it has always been, gathering nuts and bark to be stored in preparation for winter. The newest member of the group is RJ the raccoon (Bruce Willis), who convinces the animals that suburbia is a great blessing, the source of all the food they could ever want. What the animals don't know is that RJ has an ulterior motive: He has only a short time to replace all of the food that he's stole from Vincent the bear (a perfectly cast Nick Nolte), and plans to do so by taking advantage of the hard work of his new friends.
Like most animated movies these days, we get lots of high-powered star voice casting, and most of it works well. Thomas Haden Church is very funny in one of the two significant human roles; he's Dwayne, the exterminator who's brought in to get rid of the animals. Also good are Wanda Sykes as Stella the skunk; Eugene Levy and Catharine O'Hara as a pair of midwestern porcupines ("Oh, jeepers!" "Oh, yah, jeepers; that's the word, don'cha know."); and William Shatner, continuing his remarkable late career of brilliant self-parody as Ozzie the possum, whose faked-death scene is a magnificent takeoff of Shatner's signature dramatic vocal style ("I! can see! the light! Must! Go! Forward!" and so on).
Best of all is Steve Carell, cranking his voice into its highest register as Hammy, the hyperactive squirrel who zips from place to place, frantically trying to remember where his food is stored, and constantly begging for assistance ("Wanna help me find my nuts?").
Less successful is Garry Shandling as Verne. Shandling as a turtle sounds like a good idea, but voice acting, even for a quiet and tentative character, requires a level of vocal energy that Shandling fails to provide; he's a low-energy actor, and when Verne takes center stage, Shandling didn't hold my attention. He's not helped by the fact that Verne is drawn and animated in a less interesting way than most of the other characters.
The slapstick action sequences don't always reach the energy they need; Verne's first excursion into suburbia is paced just a hair too slow throughout. But the final sequence, in which the animals make one final raid through the exterminator's series of traps, is ingenious, and Hammy's role in that sequence is smartly conceived and beautifully prepared for.
Over the Hedge certainly isn't at the level of the Pixar movies, but kids will enjoy it, and there's enough intelligence in it to keep adults happy; the movie is ultimately a surprisingly pointed commentary on commercialism and the human "need" for more stuff.
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