Movie Review: Over the Hedge-Suburban Satire in a Cartoon....FOR KIDS

I greatly enjoyed this movie. Most computer animated cartoons have leveled humor for adults while being a lot of fun for kids, but this movie had a leveled plot. It is a lot of fun and completely silly and laughable, but it is a great satire on the excess of our culture, making fun of our eating, living, driving, and entertainment habits. So basically I laughed at myself a lot through this movie.

The basic plot is there is a Racoon (I hardly ever remember character names or who voices them) who is trying to steal the food stash of a hibratnating bear, all human food. When he gets caught by the bear and accidently looses all the bear's food, the bear threatens to eat him unless he can replace everything in one week when the bear will be done sleeping. The movie than focuses on a community of herbivores who wake up from their hibranation to discover that their habitat has been invaded by a very large hedge. On the other side is a new suburban community. The leader of the pack, a turtle, goes over the hedge and through a series of amusing events decides the community should never go. The racoon then finds this community and teaches them how to steal good human food, letting them know it is not scary. For example one of the porcupine kids sees a huge SUV and asks what it is. The racoon replies, "Humans need that because they are slowly losing their ability to walk." That's the first 15 minutes of the movie. The rest plays all of that out. Excellent fun.

What I most like about this movie is the leveled plot. Leveled humor is funny, but leveled plot is brilliant. And it does it all without leaving the kids out of the fun. This movie is worth a see.

4 1/2 canaries out of 5

P.S. Stick around through the entire credits, mostly just to listen to Ben Folds remake of his own song "Rockin' the Suburbs." I think I laughed harder at his song than anything else in the movie.

--Review written to Keith Green-The Ministry Years 1977-1979. I doubt he would have enjoyed this movie as much as I did.