'Open Season': Recycled fun
By Jon Waterhouse
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Like "Over the Hedge," "Madagascar" and "The Wild" before it, "Open
Season" is an animated fish-out-of-water tale about talking animals
displaced from the comforts of home.
Somebody call the cartoon police.
Martin Lawrence mumbles along as the voice of Boog, a domesticated
bear who lives in the garage of his forest ranger owner. Boog's
steady diet of crackers and "Wheel of Fortune" is disrupted by
Elliot (Ashton Kutcher), a misfit mule deer who nudges Boog out the
door.
After a beautifully kinetic montage of Boog and Elliot trashing a
quickie mart on a junk-food binge, Boog gets the boot. The ranger
is forced to send him into the wild, where he must survive with
wisecracking animals on the left and gun-toting hunters on the
right.
Boog comes to terms with the great outdoors in between whiz-bang
comic action sequences tailor-made for video game-devouring young
people. But the visual assault, including tons of slapstick and an
impressive white-water rapids scene, may go by faster than some
attention deficit disorder-afflicted brains can process.
"Open Season" plays like a series of vignettes loosely linked
together into one big picture. And that's one reason it doesn't
hold up. Not to mention, potty humor in kiddie flicks no matter
how funny (or common) it is is a cheap lunge at a laugh.
The filmmakers play with tired cultural stereotypes (a dachshund
with a German accent, a Scottish squirrel named McSquizzy), but the
movie's most effective exaggerated image strikes animation
gold.
That's obsessed hunter Shaw, a not too distant cousin of Snidely
Whiplash and Dick Dastardly, who provides plenty of goofy villain
hilarity. The character's manic, herky-jerky animation, flowing
mullet and the podunk howl of actor Gary Sinise make for a winning
combination despite the movie's recycled storyline.
But while the cartoon police are busy filing a plot violation, they
should bring up charges on artistic grounds, too. Sure, solid
computer-generated imagery rarely fails to impress. The texture of
Boog's fur has beaucoup depth. Foliage blows seamlessly in the
breeze. Colors pop.
But the film's soulless, computerized mountain ranges can't touch
the immaculate, hand-painted backgrounds of old-school Disney. If
animation filmmakers are going to recycle, they need to go back.
Way back.
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