Posted: 10/03/2006

Open Season

(2006)

by Hank Yuloff

I think I have almost reached my limit.

What limit?

The limit of watching marginal animated films that feature animals with human problems, and hijinks abound while they get out of it. In the last year or so, we have witnessed Ice Age 2, Madagascar, Barnyard, Chicken Little, and Hoodwinked. Add to the list Open Season. I only laughed out loud two or three times, so I can only give this one the most marginal of recommendations.

This is the story of a tame grizzly bear named Boog, who is banished to the Wild when his owner (Debra Messing as Grace—I mean, Beth) is convinced, wrongly, that he has become too destructive to be kept in captivity. He is not the least bit ready to claim his position at the top of the forest food chain and is taken advantage of by everyone from bucks to squirrels to salmon.

Helping him find his way home is a mule deer named Elliot, who has himself been cut from the herd that he called home.

In addition to that, it is only a couple of days before hunting season begins and we can see that if Boog does not get back off the mountain in the next 72 hours, he is going to become a prop for a Playboy centerfold photo spread.

The voices are generally more than adequate. Martin Lawrence voices Boog. He is a great grizzly. Also good is Gary Sinise as the hunter, Shaw. Ashton Kutcher is Elliot. This part could have been most anyone; my guess is they wanted the name value. The other interesting voices are Billy Connolly, who is a squirrel, and Patrick Warburton as Ian, the Buck.

As we left the theater, a middle-aged couple wandered out after us almost embarrassed they didn’t have a child to bring to the movie. I agreed with them, but they seemed to like the movie a whole lot more than I did, so I include that comment on the slight chance I am wrong on the pedestrian comedy I witnessed. The best point I can give this film is that it does answer one of the age old questions: does a bear shit in the woods? The answer is, apparently, no. Now I have to go ask my Catholic friends about the Pope.

Hank Yuloff is a co-founder of Film Monthly, a film critic and media mogul in Los Angeles.

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