Gary Shandling as Verne the turtle (center) and the hedge gang star in Dreamworks Animation’s Over The Hedge, ©2006.

Films for kids don’t necessarily need hidden messages, product placement, crude humor, or really heavy emotional life lessons in order to be successful. Another thing that seems to bring a film down is too many recognizable celebrity voice actors, all wanting their share of jokes and screen time.

Over The Hedge is based on the popular comic strip originally created by Michael Fry and T. Lewis. The strip plays out with a raccoon named R.J. and a turtle named Verne stick together to try and get used the suburbia that is ever growing closer to their home. For the most part, the film stays true to the comic, but adds plenty of new elements and new characters to keep the story fresh.

The film opens with our hero R.J. (Bruce Willis) the raccoon attempting to get a bag of Dorito-like chips out of a vending machine, it gets stuck on the shelf, and we’ve all been there and hate it. R.J. attempts to find another source of food and recalls a friend of his who is currently towards the end of hibernation, is loaded with goodies. He climbs into the cave on a cliff side overshadowing what appears to be a motel, and attempting to steal the food from Vincent (Nick Nolte), a bear, he wakes him up and the food flies out of the cave on a wagon. Unfortunately a vehicle hits the wagon and R.J. is forced to replace everything within a week or Vincent will devour him.

R.J. makes a list and heads off to a developed Suburbia. Meanwhile a group of animals wakes from hibernation inside of a log and wake up to a horrifying site. A large hedge spread as far as the eye can see. Verne (Gary Shandling), the turtle and cautious leader penetrates the hedge and is terrified to realize that most of their home has been developed into a shiny development. R.J meets up with the group of animals and promises a solution to their food problem, infiltrating the human’s paradise and stocking up for hibernation next year. Little do the animals know that R.J. is using them to restock the bear’s lost goods. The obsessive owner, Gladys (Alisson Janney) of a house calls an exterminator known as Dwayne (Thomas Haden Church) and is focused on eliminating all these bothersome animals for fear it will lower the property value.

The cast of the animals is great, not to mention absolutely hilarious. Bruce Willis plays the sneaky and resourceful raccoon R.J., Gary Shandling as the cautious leader turtle Verne, Steve Carrell surprises us with a hyper squirrel known as Hammy, Wanda Sykes as the attitude packed skunk, Stella. William Shatner is the skittish possum, Ozzie, who is constantly looking out for his teenaged daughter, trying to teach her how to properly play dead.

I was really impressed with the humor of this film. It did not really have to rely on any crude humor. That right away, is worthy of respect. Dreamworks is so fond of producing CGI films loaded with crude humor such as last summer’s bomb, Madagascar. There are a lot of great movie references such as William Shatner as Ozzie pretending to die on a sidewalk moaning “Rosebud.” The screenplay written by Karey Kirkpatrick, Len Blum, Lorne Cameron, and David Hoselton includes a lot more humor and continuous laughter than I expected and is quite a sweet treat to view. The depiction of Hammy the squirrel is extremely funny, he appears twitchy and fast paced, exaggerating the common squirrel we are all so familiar with.

The story flows and doesn’t linger on anything too long and doesn’t rely on monologues but for the most part lets the audience explore the humorous world where animals and humans clash. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the perfect heartwarming feel and magic that other CGI films such as Shrek have.
There is also the element that R.J. explains in great detail that is both smart and humorous and makes you question if this is really how animals view us. The humans eat the food, they contact the food (pizza delivery), the food is delivered to them , they worship the food (watching them say a prayer over dinner), they wear the food (fast food mascotts), they exercise so they don’t feel guilty so they can eat more food, and when they are finished they put it into shiny metal cans just for them.

I mentioned a few factors earlier on in my review and Over The Hedge lacks them for the most part. It has a good lesson, but the film is more fun than it is informing and with a film like this that’s important. Kids go to the movies to be entertained, not educated. The film takes the idea of too much land development and puts a pretty green spin on it, but doesn’t hammer it into your face as many other films do. If they were even attempting to do so, don’t do it forcefully, win your audience over with what you are trying to do. Make them laugh.

Rated PG for some rude humor and mild comic action.

Running time 83 minutes.