Over the Hedge Essay

Over the Hedge is an animated film about the difficulties little harmless animals experience when man encroaches on their habitat (Fry, 2006). The film starts with the end of winter and the animals in the forest are coming out of hibernation. A hyperactive and mischievous raccoon named RJ forages on the junk food of the bear; he escapes alive with the promise of returning all of the bear’s food within a week. On the other side, a family of cute little animals awakens with a green wall in the middle of their forest and suddenly fears what lies beyond the hedge. Verve the turtle ventures over the hedge to find out what was on the other side; however he was subjected to the ferocious human machines like the lawn mower, grass sprinkler, bikes and etc. He returns to the forest and warns that no one should ever venture over the hedge as it is dangerous. The group of animals however had another problem, they had no food. Then here comes, the rascal raccoon RJ and convinces the group that humans throw out their food every time and all they needed to do was go out there and gather it. Verve disagreed and warned them against the idea, but as food became scarce Verve finally agreed with RJ. RJ on the other hand was really thinking of how the group could help him gather the food he owed the bear and here the conflict started. The rest of the film tells about friendship, trust, honesty and love of family. The film does this effectively within the context of man’s environmental responsibility to be stewards of Mother Nature. The plot of the story was actually very simple however, since the characters were cute, furry, funny and adorable animals, the film held much interest. The visuals were very good; it was clear, crisp and very alive. Although one would notice that it was not created in the traditional way, in fact the movie’s animation were all computer generated, from the drawing to the filming. The sound was in the standard Dolby format, and it was clear and loud, however some of the characters dialogues were tweaked to resemble that of the animal, sometimes the dialogue got lost in the way it was pronounced but one could still understand the gist of the sentence. I especially liked the three baby possums because they were really cute, and they were very funny. They had this way of saying things in chorus and then either refuting or supporting each other and their thoughts resembled the candidness of children. The vividness of the colors and images really fed my interest in the film, however I was lost in the burping of the squirrel and the farting of the skunk, maybe the director thought it would add to the comedic element of the film, but it did not feel that way to me. The film talks about the importance of living well with our animal friends, and it shows a very real example of how man react to animals when they start invading our homes and community. The film however had the ability to make us realize that man had been the first to invade the animals’ home and since they get their food from their ecosystem, man’s invasion of their habitat also affects their existence (Peabody, 2006). The film is far from serious and boring, it is funny, entertaining and honest, and brutally honest I must say. The film actually appealed to my sense of justice and equality knowing that man and beast should live together in the best possible way. Although, the film was targeted for children of all ages, some of the dialogues were brazen and crude, thus the film landed in the PG rating, but all the same it contains the essential elements of a good story, interesting characters, excellent animation and great actors and this held my interest in the film until its end.