The premise of cute forest animals terrorizing people and stealing their food is pretty funny in itself, and Nad Hedges tries to exploit that as best he can. Much of the comedy in the film is not for me, such as the running gag that Vern constantly sheds his shield and we see his ass. I think something like that would work better with kids, which makes sense. Some characters have good chemistry, but overall this is the kind of movie where you turn off your brain and enjoy eighty minutes of nibbling. And I think that's good, but Over the Hedge is ultimately more for kids than adults.
My parents, with whom we saw the film in 2006, do not have fond memories of it and show no interest in seeing it again. Usually DreamWorks goes out of their way to entertain the whole family, and honestly I think that effort was made here, but it didn't really work. Over the Hedge is a DreamWorks film you may not have heard much about.
Over the Hedge was released in 2006 and is based on the comic book of the same name, written by Michael Fry and illustrated by T. The film has an impressive cast with names like Bruce Willis, Steve Carrell, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte and many others. Above the Hedge is directed by Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick, with a dozen writers, including Len Blum and Lorne Cameron. Interestingly, Over the Hedge was originally a Fox Animation Studios project that would have been directed by legendary animator Don Bluth. However, poor reviews and box office results from Bluth's 2000 project Titan A.E.
Led to the studio's closure, and Over the Hedge was delayed until DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg showed interest and bought the film rights to Fry and Lewes' comic book. We'll never know what Bluth's version would have looked like, or if he was any good, but we can't help but wonder. I saw Behind the Hedge in the theater when it came out, and I really liked it. That said, I was 11 years old, and my taste in movies has changed a lot since then. Luckily Max from HBO had the movie and I watched it a second time. The core story about family is sappy at times and predictable, but I liked the sly digs at suburban life.
The characterizations are fun and the voice casting is perfect. Willis is a very good voice actor and brings the right tone to RJ. The same can be said of Shandling's work as Verne, who admits that he is so cautious that there are places in his shell he still hasn't gone. It was stroke of genius to cast Nick Nolte as a bear and Shatner as a possum that performs over-dramatic death scenes. Additionally, Carell makes the hyper Hammy irresistibly likable.
The scene where Hammy drinks caffeine for the first time is hilarious because it plays out in a way that wasn't expected. A small cluster of featurettes accompanies the film on this Special Edition DVD, including Behind The Hedge. Co-directors Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick reveal the roots of the story in an eco-minded comic strip by T Lewis. Bringing his characters to three-dimensional life presented many challenges for the animation team, but most daunting of all was designing convincing fur. This is examined in more depth in The Tech Of Over The Hedge. The computer bods confess they were especially narked by copious 'hugging' scenes, which required them to write new programmes for the ruffling of said fur.
I just wish I could shake the uneasy feeling that the movie, codirected by Karey Kirkpatrick and Antz's Tim Johnson and based on the comic strip by Michael Fry and T Lewis, is really about the terrorists winning. Parents need to know that this animated movie includes a fair amount of cartoon violence. Characters are crushed, blown up, flattened, banged, burned, and bounced -- all in good, Chuck-Jones-influenced fun. Animal protagonists steal food from each other and from unsympathetic humans.
When a raccoon steals a bear's winter stash of food, the bear threatens retaliation and the raccoon fools other "foragers" into stealing food from humans to repay the bear and save himself. A human exterminator brings traps and brutal gizmos . Younger kids will laugh at the obvious stuff and won't get the edgier humor aimed at older audiences, so this is one that several age groups can enjoy together. Unlike other films that dedicate a sizable amount of their runtimes building up before getting to their main plots , this film doesn't take a long time to establish it's main story. As the very first event in the movie is RJ trying to steal Vincent's food, only to end up causing it to be ran over by a truck and him making a deal with the bear to find more food in a week.
And the rest of the film is dedicated to building on and extending that plotline. Above Hedge has a good character design and good vocal performance. The animation looks great, and the characters are very likable. For such an interesting movie for kids, it has a strange message about the morality of stealing. The theme of family distress is a bit heavy-handed, and R.J.'s turnaround comes too late, but the film is fun.
A video game based on the film was released on May 9, 2006. Developed by Edge of Reality, Beenox and Vicarious Visions, it was published by Activision for PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows, Xbox, GameCube, Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance. Shane Baumel, Sami Kirkpatrick, and Madison Davenport were the only ones to reprise their roles for the video game while everyone else was voiced by different voice actors. The film is based on the characters from the United Media comic strip of the same name. The film is the first DreamWorks Animation movie to be distributed by Paramount Pictures.
In the animated film, "Over the Hedge", Bruce Willis will voice the mischievous con-artist raccoon R.J., and Garry Shandling will be the voice of the sensitive turtle named Verne. When R.J., Verne and their woodland friends find a suburban housing development encroaching on their forest home, Verne's first instinct is to retreat into his shell and leave, but the ever-opportunistic R.J. Sees a treasure trove to be had from his unsuspecting new neighbors.
Form an unlikely friendship as they learn to co-exist with—and even exploit—this strange new world called suburbia. The film is not a total failure though, the vocal performances are consistently good. As mentioned earlier, the characters largely complement each other well. I always enjoy seeing Catherine O'Hara, and in Behind the Hedge she plays Lou and Penny with her boyfriend Eugene Levy.
Nick Nolte is very good as Ozzy, and he really sounds like a bear with his deep, rumbling voice that gets louder when he's angry. Honestly, my favorite thing about Over the Hedge is the human villains, Gladys and Dwayne . The first is the president of a homeowners association, who clearly doesn't want animals terrorizing her neighbors.
To get rid of them, she calls Dwayne and asks him to kill the animals in increasingly inhumane and illegal ways. His appearance at the end is one of the funniest scenes in the film. These two have most of the best, most absurd lines in the film, and personally I love these actors.
Allison Janney is one of the best actresses, and I've been a fan of Church since George Jungle. In the beginning of the movie the Hedge is called "Steve" by Hammy during his first encounter of the Hedge. This is a direct take from the comic strip in which the character says the same thing and also Steve Carell is the actor that voices Hammy. Over the Hedge is a computer-animated animated feature, based on the United Media's comic strip of the same name.
Directed by Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick and produced by Bonnie Arnold, it was released on May 19, 2006. These two were the first of the day and while it started slow it got better as it got going. They both talk about how the process works and how difficult they thought doing an animated voice is. Also Bruce explains how when you are recording you are always just doing your voice with no interaction from anyone else so it makes it hard to know how it is all going to come out. The other thing that Bruce said is this is the first time that he got to play David Addison again, the character from Moonlighting.
The interview is done with both of them together and there are a lot of funny parts. The film is about family and what is really important in life. Gary Shandling plays the leader of a group of animals who wake from hibernation to find that humans have invaded their surrounding world. At the same time, Bruce Willis's character of RJ is trying desperately to find an answer to his newly created problems and in this group of naive creatures RJ thinks he has found the answer. Par for the course for animated movies, animals frequently get tossed around, hit by humans, smashed by various objects and are almost run over by automobiles. He also hits a human and gets porcupine needles stuck in his face.
Verne is mistaken for a hockey puck by humans, and he narrowly misses getting diced by a set of falling knives. A young girl, in turn, gets struck in the head by a catapulted turtle. Trying to retrieve a snack, RJ whacks a vending machine with a golf club. Over the Hedge is a 2006 American computer-animated comedy, fantasy film, based on the characters from the United Media comic strip of the same name.
The film was produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed through Paramount Pictures. They find that much of the forest they lived in has been turned into a housing development, which is separated from the little forest remaining by a giant hedge. The animals wonder how they will forage enough food for the next winter.
RJ meets them and encourages them to traverse the hedge and steal food from the humans. Despite Verne's concerns, the animals join RJ in stealing and stockpiling human food, not knowing he intends to give it to Vincent. Gladys Sharp, the neighborhood Home Owners Association president, takes notice of the animal problem and hires exterminator Dwayne LaFontant to get rid of them. The hedge also beckons the resourceful raccoon who calls himself RJ for the junk food he needs to repay a territorial bear . It's RJ's sneaky goal to persuade the trusting many to help him load up his loot wagon.
And if the de facto group leader, the turtle called Verne , has qualms about the operation, RJ will appeal directly to the susceptible consumerist masses by introducing them to the joys of sugar rush and the uses of the universal remote control. Full financial estimates for this film, including domestic and international box office, video sales, video rentals, TV and ancillary revenue are available through our research services. For more information, please contact us at research@the-numbers.com. All the animal character designs are appealing, however Gladys is pretty awful. But in some way her hideous design matches her character.
The animators bring great performances to their creations. Always fun and often funny, OVER THE HEDGE really does fit the bill as solid family entertainment, containing enough for both adults and kids to enjoy. Dwayne LaFontant - An exterminator and the tertiary antagonist of the film. A raccoon named RJ , after unsuccessfully trying to get a snack item from a vending machine, ventures into the cave of a hibernating American black bear named Vincent . While trying to steal Vincent's cache of goods, as well as his red wagon and blue cooler, RJ accidentally wakes up Vincent, who after realizing what RJ is doing, tries to scare him into giving his stuff back.
In a panic, RJ knocks the wagon of food into the street. It looks okay, and RJ and Vincent laugh about it, when it is run over by a truck and is destroyed. BASED on the US comic strip of the same name, Over the Hedge is the story of R.J. U.S. actor Bruce Willis gestures as he arrives for the Russian premiere of the movie 'Over the Hedge' in Moscow May 24, 2006. Willis lends his voice to one of the main characters in DreamWorks's new animation 'Over the Hedge' that will open in Russia in June.U.S.
Actor Bruce Willis gestures as he arrives for the Russian premiere of the movie 'Over the Hedge' in Moscow May 24, 2006. Willis lends his voice to one of the main characters in DreamWorks's new animation 'Over the Hedge' that will open in Russia in June. Based on the United Media comic strip of the same name by Michael Fry and T. Garry Shandling, Bruce Willis and Wanda Sykes star as voices in Dreamworks Pictures' Over the Hedge. Shandling is a turtle trying to help his forest family store food for the coming winter.
Willis plays R.J., a raccoon helping the animals cross over into suburbia to forage. Bruce Willis plays RJ, the raccoon; after steeling some food and waking up a hibernating bear , RJ has to pay him back by finding some new snacks for the bear. RJ lands himself plop in the middle of suburbia - well, just outside in the forest where he meets a new group of animals who he tricks to help him gather his food stash. The songs are innocuous, as is the family-values lesson about how caring for one another is more fulfilling than caring only for oneself.
It sounds funnier coming from Bruce Willis as a raccoon. It's sometimes hard to remember how old a film is in relation to the ageing of its technical effects. I'd put it on the level of current cartoons, but considering Over the Hedge came out fifteen years ago, the animation is actually pretty good. Their coat is a bit clumsy, but their movements are fluid and they have very expressive eyes. There are a few non-diegetic songs by Ben Folds on the soundtrack that are very good.
Some of the lyrics are quite straightforward, which you can take from the experience, and the style is a bit sentimental for me. It's like the songs want to be quirky, which bothers me. However, the score by Rupert Gregson-Williams (Harry's younger brother) is quite good.
I think Over the Hedge could have done without the background songs, especially given the short length of the film. The movie is about an hour and twenty minutes long if you don't count the credits, and that's a lot less even for a cartoon for kids. As a side note, DreamWorks head Jeffery Katzenberg recently said the company was adding another year of development to their features because in the past some films' stories suffered from being rushed. With more time, I would have liked to see if the suburban satire could have been sharper and the family theme less preachy and on-the-nose.
Nonetheless, this is still good popcorn entertainment that succeeds by putting compelling characters at its center instead of just trying to copy the style of DreamWorks' mega-hit SHREK. A group of hungry critters led by RJ the raccoon plot to make their way over a giant hedge that was built to separate the woodland animals from their usual treasure trove of snack food. The gang sets out to overcome the new divide in hopes of pleasing a hungry bear – and themselves. Like most DreamWorks films, not only we see outstanding 3D CGI animation, but it's was a HUGE improvement from Shark Tale, one of DreamWorks film that produced at their Glendale studio previous CGI movies that had a rather unfinished look to it . But here, both the animation and the character designs are great.
The film is the first from DreamWorks Animation SKG to be based on a comic strip. Gladys Sharp - The President of HOA and the secondary antagonist of the film. Nugent - A Rottweiler and one of the film's antagonists. Tiger - Gladys' pet cat and one of the film's antagonists. Stella - A female skunk and the secondary tritagonist of the the film. RJ - A raccoon the main protagonist of both the film and comic series.
