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Genre:
Animation
Director: Jill Culton and Anthony Stacchi.
Voice Talents by: Ashton Kutcher, Martin
Lawrence, Debra Messing, Gary Sinise, Billy Connolly, Jon
Favreau.
RunTime: 1 hr 39 mins
Released By: Columbia TriStar
Rating: PG
Opening
Day: 30 November 2006
Synopsis:
When a 900-pound domesticated grizzly bear named
Boog and a scrawny one-horned mulde deer named Elliot become
stranded in the woods during hunting season, it's up to the
duo to rally all the other forest animals and turn the tables
on the hunters.
Movie
Review:
Open
Season is the first full-length feature cartoon from Sony
Pictures Animation. From the looks of it, Disney/Pixar need
not bother about the latest competition.
We
thought we knew all about domesticated-animals-thrown-into-the-wild
from last year’s Madagascar. After all, this year we
already have wild animals skimp Over the Hedge invading suburbia
and more Happy Feet penguins to come. Not to mention animation
features Cars, Ice Age 2, Monster House, Ant Bully and Flushed
Away. Why the studio chose to run with another story about
a domesticated-animal-thrown-into-the-wild as its first offering
is anybody’s guess. Audiences cannot help but get bored
if they watch Nemo get lost in the wild every year right?
The
good news first: Open Season is not all doom and gloom. Judging
from the shrill hoots it elicits from the under-12s in the
cinema, it definitely appeals to that demographic with its
toilet humour. Heck, even the balding guy beside me was chortling
at the physical gags and spoof jokes. The movie is visually
slick and wondrously detailed; its soundtrack of jaunty ditties
and meandering ballads even sound appropriate in the movie.
The
definitive indictment of the movie’s failure, however,
is in its inability to elevate the tiresome storyline to something
original. The movie fails because of its cringe-worthy rehashed
animation clichés, incongruous set-piece scenes that
do not fit into one another, some very forgettable characters
and many bad jokes. Rabbit fight jokes work to a certain extent
until we recall the dazed, suckered and floating rabbits in
Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Ashton
Kutcher is funny until we turn our attention to Shrek the
Third and the Return of King Donkey. The Porcupine is no match
for the wire-fu Madagascar penguins.
In
short, we have seen too many animation movies to be delighted
by Open Season. The movie never rises above the messy climatic
battle between men and animals in the last part of the story
– it is tired, confused and not very laughable.
Movie
Rating:
(This movie about a domesticated bear and his comic foil mule
deer has a weak story and is destined to disappear under this
year’s deluge of animation extravaganzas)
Review
by Lim Mun Pong
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