In "Over the Hedge," a band of diminutive woodland creatures wake from a winter's hibernation only to find that all but a sliver of their homeland has been deforested and turned into a suburban habitat for humans. When a stranger, a raccoon with a secret agenda of his own, offers to solve the problem that this new development poses to the animals ability to supply themselves with food, they allow themselves to be lead "Over the Hedge" to steal food from the invading suburbanites. \nBased on the comic strip by Michael Fry and T. Lewis, the movie features a turtle named Verne (Gary Shandling) as the sensible leader of the animals who is supplanted when RJ the raccoon (Bruce Willis) wins the group over after offering them their first taste of junk food. The group living with Verne in a hollow log consist of a wholesome family of Porcupine, a Skunk (Wanda Sykes) with poor self image, a hyperactive squirrel, an opossum (William Shatner) and his teenage daughter (Avril Lavigne). Nick Nolte, Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara are among the other notable talents who lend their voices to characters in the movie.\nThe number of celebrity voices does not in this case signify the quality of "Over the Hedge." In fact the film makes a disappointing addition to DreamWorks catalogue of animated titles. While the animation has the three-dimensional quality of films such as "Shrek," the style is unpleasantly goofy especially when it comes to character design, and in some important instances such as Verne the turtle, 3-D makes the character seem ugly and unendearing. \nThe story itself is rather thinly stretched to provide a movie's worth of entertainment. Too many of the jokes involve Verne losing his shell and exposing his rather human-looking backside. The most entertaining parts of the movie are the sequence about humans and their food that was shown in trailers for the film and also the interaction between Stella the Skunk and a Parisian tomcat that sadly gets less than five minutes of the films' running time. Any intended message about the strain that the development of suburbia puts on wild animals is downplayed and a predictable and overly sappy message about the love and acceptance of family feels like it has been awkwardly inserted into the plot. If you are desperate to occupy some children for a little while, "Over the Hedge" will do the trick, but if you are looking for a quality animated film experience, don't bother with this one.
\n--Ash Cartwright
