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September 29, 2006
Open Season
(out of four)
Finally, after all these years, generations of kids who wept when the hunter shot Bambi's mother can get their revenge with Open Season, in which a pack of resourceful forest animals turns the tables on the humans. Armed with brassieres, marshmallows and other unlikely weapons of resistance, these chatty critters organize a rebellion to save their skins and reclaim the hunting ground for themselves.
I wonder if Hollywood has ever considered making a computer-animated movie in which the animals don't talk. Instead of rounding up a crowd of recognizable actors to crack jokes in silly accents, they might rely on body language and other tricks to let the audience in to the emotional world of these creatures. How daring might that be?
Open Season has all the reason in the world to do things differently, but instead, it plays it safe. It's the first project out of the gate from Sony Pictures Animation, which aspires to rival the creative teams behind Ice Age (Fox), Over the Hedge (DreamWorks) and Cars (Pixar). For an inaugural effort, Open Season ain't bad, but the studio shows far more promise with its gee-whiz visuals than it does in the story department.
The talking animals in question here are Boog (Martin Lawrence), a tame bear who has been living the high life ever since a forest ranger rescued him as a cub, and Elliot (Ashton Kutcher), a scrawny deer who decides to liberate the perfectly happy bear and return him to his natural habitat.
It's a buddy movie -- that's clear from the lonely blue porcupine who, serving as the movie's Eeyore, endearingly sighs the word "buddy" every so often from the sidelines -- but there's no chemistry between the characters.
This is a common problem with animated movies, fostered by the fact that all those big-name actors have busy schedules and can't necessarily be bothered to arrange their recording sessions together. That's where the trouble between Lawrence and Kutcher's characters starts. In the movie's press notes (which are typically padded with quotes to make the movie look good), Lawrence says, "I didn't have the opportunity to meet Ashton [during recording]. Yet, when I look at the scenes in the finished movie, you would think that we had hung out." Right.
More likely, you'll pick up on just how little Boog and Elliot have in common. Why would these two mismatched critters want to hang out in the first place? It's not like Buzz Lightyear and Woody, who are forced together by a toy-collecting kid, or Marlin and Dory, who put their differences aside to find Nemo. In Open Season, the likable bear has at least three chances to ditch his obnoxious new sidekick, but every time, he ends up coming back.
The good news is that Sony has decided not to adopt a "house style," which means that unlike Pixar, where all the movies look, feel and sound the same (enough with the Randy Newman songs already!), they have the potential to reinvent themselves every time out.
[as featured in The Miami Herald]
Posted by Peter Debruge on