Open Season: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

It's convention and cliches that drive the new computer-animated movie "Open Season," an overly familiar yet nevertheless likable film that could have been exceptional had it attempted something fresh within the genre. Since risks of that nature tend to make a studio nervous, "Season" chooses the well-worn path of formula, though generally with good results.

The film, which Jill Culton and Roger Allers based on Steve Bencich, Ron Friedman and Nat Mauldin's script, is nicely animated--and not to the point where it appears to be trying for realism. The movie's animation is content to look like animation, which these days is a bonus, with many of the human and animal characters all loopy exaggerations of their real-life counterparts.

This is the first full-length movie from Sony Pictures Animation and while timing isn't on its side--in the wake of "The Wild," "Over the Hedge" and "Barnyard," this year has been overloaded with similar fare--it features enough funny dialogue and clever action sequences to make it worth a look.

In the film, the domesticated, 900-pound grizzly bear Boog (voice of Martin Lawrence) has a good thing going for him. Since he was a cub, he has been raised by park ranger Beth (Debra Messing), who has turned her garage into a home for Boog that includes everything from comfortable bedding to a teddy bear to working plumbing. This bear uses a commode.

Beth loves him, the feeling is mutual, but what is becoming increasingly obvious is the rather large elephant that's in the room with them--that would be Boog's underlying need for the wide open spaces of his natural habitat, to which Beth knows he must return.

Circumstances call for that sooner than she anticipated. One night, after saving the rambunctious mule deer Elliot (Ashton Kutcher) from the film's villainous hunter, Shaw (Gary Sinise), Boog and Elliot go out on the town, break into a convenience store and eat enough candy to cause a destructive sugar rush. They trash the store, which compels Beth to bring Boog high up in the forests of Timberline, which she hopes will be out of reach of the hunters soon to descend there for hunting season.

It isn't. Still, what the hunters find is just what you expect--these animals have had enough and they're are ready to rumble, with beaver Reilly (Jon Favreau), McSquizzy the squirrel (Billy Connolly in full Irish brogue) and everything from skunks to rabbits to deer joining Boog and Elliot in formulating a revolution. They fight back, which gives the movie its violent jolt of energy (and its PG rating), particularly when the vicious Shaw darkens the picture with his inevitable appearance on the scene. Shaw's rifle, after all, is lovingly called Lorraine, and how he treats her is more unsettling than how this movie would play at, say, an NRA convention.

Grade: B