Open Season

Open Season (2006) – on rental. Ling was asking the other day if I could start renting a few more animated films that she can watch with Hannah at home. So, I’ve been looking through the past couple of years worth of such films and adding them to the rental queue.

Open Season is the first of two animated movies to arrive yesterday (the other was Happy Feet). The reviews for this Sony Pictures Entertainment was somewhat damning back then. But even forewarned and thus willing to be a little more indulgent than normal for any of the film’s deficiencies, one viewing later, I’ve concluded that Open Season is really, really bad.

The story is basically about a domesticated 900-pound grizzly bear, Boog, who’s having a nice living in a small town as a performing bear. His comfortable life gets turned upside down when he runs into a mule deer, Elliot, from the surrounding forests and who’s being hunted by a fanatical game hunter, Shaw. Boog gets banished to the forests when he first reverts to his natural element i.e. raiding a candy store. The rest of the film is about his adjustments to the wild and how he leads his fellow animals to resist the game hunters arriving for the open hunting season.

There’s a lot of similarity between this film and Madagascar and to a lesser degree Over the Hedge which were both released at about the same time period – all three films are about animals who switch between natural and domesticated habitats and the slapstick-esque and learning adjustments necessary.

Unfortunately, while the first Madagascar was mildly enjoyable (saved in huge part by the antics of the four militant penguins) and Over the Hedge very enjoyable, Open Season was a capital fail on so many counts. I’m willing to go with simplistic and unimaginative stories given its intended audience. But the characters: right from the two leads – Boog and Elliot – are just plain annoying and unsympathetic. Boog was voiced by Martin Lawrence – imagine, a Black American actor voicing a grizzly bear with all the voice traits of African Americans – and Elliot, Ashton Kutcher – whose voice befits the character but the character isn’t given sufficient personality to leave any sort of impression outside of being Boog’s spoil and partner-in-crime. You won’t care about the bonding and ‘buddy’-relationship between two, which is key to buying-in for the film.

The atrocious voice miscasting doesn’t stop with Lawrence’s Boog. Even worst is Scottish actor Billy Connolly’s take on a fanatical and defensive squirrel. I like Connolly – especially from his role in The Man Who Sued God – and his voice timbre is unique. But this is a squirrel that speaks with a strong Scottish accent + given mind-numbing lines + given nothing to do except throw nuts at approaching creatures and men. It just didn’t work.

And for an animated film that’s supposedly comedic in genre, the film just isn’t funny. There’re about two jokes in the entire film’s 86 minute run length that elicited a chuckle – one to do with what beavers eat during lunch time, and another about a Deer-jock trying to marshal his troop of minions – but every other gag was a clunker that either got from me a non-reaction or – worst still – a groan. The climatic ‘final battle’ in which the animals face off the band of game hunters was all work-manlike with no humor – even when it’s based on such golden material like hurling forks and spoons using the elasticity of underwear and brassieres.

Between Star Wars: The Clone Wars which I’ve already one-starred, Open Season is even worse. Apart from the two aforementioned jokes, there’s nothing else in this film that worked for me. Even Ling looked bored.

This one gets ZERO stars.