Wednesday, May 17, 2006

DreamWorks Delivers Mediocre Film

I had an opportunity to see "Over The Hedge" from DWA earlier this week. I enjoyed myself and even laughed outloud a few times. Overall, I had a good time. However, as a whole, I'd rate this movie 2 1/2 stars out of 5.

(very mild spoilers)

Some of the lighting and textures were very nice, and the animation was well done. The story just felt like a big, "ehh, so what?" I just didn't care about RJ the raccoon. Whether he ends up getting eaten by the bear or captured by the animal control guy, it really didn't matter. Bruce Willis is a horrible voice for a cartoon character and that only made it harder to care about his character.

(/very mild spoilers)


I was more interested in paying attention to the animation, lighting, textures than caring about the story itself. That isn't a good sign at all. On the plus side, DW didn't throw in a bunch of songs to try and make it sound hip and cool or splatter it with timely references. At the same time, I really didn't like Ben Folds music in there (and I am a fan of BF5).


I don't imagine this film will have very long legs.


Prior to Hedge, they screened "First Flight" a short film produced at DreamWorks. It was pretty good. I'm not sure if it was the projector or the render itself, but there was some flickering and out of focus moments that started to give me a headache. Maybe they rendered it low and bumped up the res. However, I can't imagine they would do that. Put the visual glitches aside and it was a nice film. Almost in complete contrast to Over The Hedge; the texturing and lighting fell a little flat, however, the story was interesting and kept me wrapped up.

1 comment:

Venice Menace said...

While I could pick at this film's faults, I do think it's a crowd pleaser that WILL HAVE LEGS.

It's simple enough for everyone to follow. It's got laughs. It's got the right mix of talent attached. Each of the cast members have their own following that will come out and see it.

I see it being bigger than MADAGASCAR.