So The Nut Job is a quite perplexing little animated movie.
Here we have a story about a purple squirrel named Surly (Will Arnett) who is a
loner from all the other animals in a park, with the exception of a rat named
Buddy who doesn’t speak. See, Surly doesn’t really get along with the other
animals that live near a giant oak tree and are led by a Raccoon (Liam Neeson)
called Raccoon (hmm, yeah). One day Surly and Buddy try to rob a hot nut stand; at the same time, Raccoon has sent two other squirrels, Andie (Katherine Heigl)
and Grayson (Brendan Fraser), to do the same. Some things happen in the ensuing caper to
cause Raccoon and all the other Park animals to kick Surly out of the park.
Once out of the park, Surly and Buddy end up finding a nut shop and decide to
do a heist to steal all the nuts from the shop so that they don’t have to worry
about food all winter.
The interesting about this movie is how all over the
place it is. I guess since the movie is focused on the animals they never
really tell you the time and place of where this all happens; you have to
figure it out with the weird stereotyped human characters. They seem to be
characters from old movies from the 1930 to 1950s. At points if feels like it’s a kid
version of that recent TNT show Mob City. Most of the jokes are pretty simple
slapstick gags. These work well for children who seem to enjoy that lot. There
are some pretty good points, but over all a lot of the humor is forgettable.
Now, the actual craft of the film is something to talk about.
While the film looks OK for the most part, it doesn’t really stand out in any real
regard visually. Most the human character just feel like paint-by-numbers, fit-the-stereotypes type of designing. All the animals actually look most like the
animals they are, but that leads to another problem in that the animals they
used look alike, and so the different characters start to look the same and you
start to forget which character is which except for Surly, since purple
squirrels don’t exist. Most of the lighting and textures are also kind of bland and repetitive - daytime sunny and yellowish or nighttime dark and
purplish. I guess they were going for a certain feel but things could’ve been
pushed a bit more for it to stand out. The actual animation or movement of the
characters is pretty good, especially the facial animations. It really excels
there with showing the feelings and performances of the characters.
So with The Nut Job we have a movie that in way is marketed
like an Over The Hedge rip-off that never really escapes that idea at all when
it’s on. The Nut Job isn’t a movie that
maybe you should rush out to go see and spend those hard-earned dollars on now. It's pretty telling when the most memorable thing in the film is a credit sequence with a 2-year-old South Korean pop song hit. While it’s quite enjoyable to kids it will be just as enjoyable when it’s on DVD
or OnDemand in a couple of months. This is one you should probably sit out.
Rating: 2 out of 5 Guttenbergs
