Over The Hedge: A brief review

God help me, I love animation. Especially today's animated movies, where there's just the right mix of fun for the kids and humor for the adults to make for a genuinely enjoyable experience for the whole family. The Dreamworks company has mastered this mix with both their previously-released Shrek movies, Antz, Madagascar, and several others, including the upcoming Flushed Away, which is previewed on the new Over The Hedge DVD.

Over The Hedge boasts an all-star cast containing Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, William Shatner, Steve Carell, Wanda Sykes, Nick Nolte, Avril Lavigne, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Thomas Haden Church and Allison Janney. It's another marvelously-crafted, well-written movie from Dreamworks, with realistic character and background features, a wide array of vibrant colors, and great Dolby 5.1 sound...a real overall treat for the senses.

Without giving too much away, I will tell you this about the story: RJ the raccoon (Willis) is on a quest to resupply the upcoming-winter food of Vincent the bear (Nolte), or he's gonna get it good. He meets up with the rest of the cast of forest animals, led by Verne the turtle (Shandling), and with constant comic relief provided by Hammy the squirrel (Carell). The forest animals have just awoken from hibernation to find that something isn't quite right with their world, and they need to figure out where they're going to get their food for the next hibernation before it's too late.

Enter RJ with a a truly "die hard" plan: He leads them into the world of the humans, where both danger and tasty food await them, and tons of out-loud laughs await us, the viewing audience.

As far as the DVD goes, like all Dreamworks animation releases, it's packed with all kinds of additional features, like a commentary, behind-the-scenes documentaries, interviews...and for the kids, there's games, a bonus Hammy short feature, and even more fun via your DVD-ROM computer drive! By the way, did you know Over The Hedge is based on a newspaper comic strip? I didn't, but now I do!

So, whether you have kids or not, I thoroughly recommend picking up this movie. The kid inside you will give you a big hug. Mine did. ;)