★★★½ Over the Hedge

[Twinkletoes: 3.5]

I liked this film about a group of hibernating animals that wake up one spring to discover that suburbia is quickly encroaching upon their home. It sort of reminded me of an updated Warner Brothers cartoon with its manic action and mischief. What I really appreciated was that unlike a lot of other family films it didn’t feel the need to be hip and contemporary. I can see 20 years from now this film aging much better than a film like Shrek 2 whose Smashmouth soundtrack (the lead singer is already on VH1’s The Surreal Life) and Joan Rivers impersonations are already cringe worthy. I think it’s the best non-Pixar animated film I have seen in a long time which given my fairly modest 3.5 star rating says a lot about my disappointment with films like the Shreks, Ice Age, Chicken Little, etc. My only real problems with it were that the characters for the most part were a bit too forgettable and the story itself didn’t feel very organic, meaning that the obligatory feel good lesson of the film felt more manufactured and less a natural extension of the story. Overall a nice family film that was often very funny.