Electrified_Voltage
Sony Pictures Animation, a CGI film production company, has now produced several movies, but I never saw any of them until earlier this month, when I finally watched 2007's "Surf's Up". I thought that was a very good animated family feature, and decided that afterwards, I would watch "Open Season", another Sony Pictures Animation production which was released the year before, and has animals as the main characters, not unlike the penguin surfing movie that followed. I knew this one was less popular than its successor, so I didn't think it would be as good, but didn't think it would be too bad, either. With these expectations, I wasn't in for any big surprises, pleasant or unpleasant, as I found this 2006 release to be a mixed blessing.Boog is a grizzly bear who lives happily as a domesticated animal in the town of Timberline, living in the garage of a park ranger named Beth, who takes care of him. He also gets to entertain people at a nature show. However, hunting season is about to begin, and a fanatical hunter named Shaw is up to no good! He has a mule deer named Elliot tied to his truck and missing an antler, and this deer begs Boog to help him escape. Boog does so, but after this, Elliot won't leave him alone! After the deer disrupts one of the domesticated bear's performances and sends him into a frenzy, the two animals are both shot with a tranquilizer gun by Beth, and then taken to a place in the wild where they will be safe from hunters during open season. When Boog wakes up, he finds that the life he knows is missing, and starts to try and make his way back to Timberline with Elliot. The tame bear lacks outdoor skills, which will unfortunately be a problem on this trek, as the two of them meet various animals of the forest! When I watched "Surf's Up", I occasionally found that the backgrounds looked primitive for a modern-day CGI film, but in "Open Season", this is a far more consistent issue. The characters are animated perfectly, but the backgrounds don't tend to go so well with them. Like "Shrek" and "Ice Age", this film involves a big creature who saves a smaller creature from harm, but then the smaller creature keeps following the big one around and annoying him. Unfortunately, this certainly isn't as funny here as it is in the other two films. The humour in this 2006 anthropomorphic animal movie can be fairly funny, including even most of the occasional toilet humour I guess, but nothing gave me very hard laughs. Shaw, voiced by Gary Sinise, is a rather bland and stale antagonist, even though they got a good actor to provide his voice. Fortunately, in addition to at least mildly amusing humour in places, this film also has some excitement to prevent it from being consistently boring. However, the major flaws still show.After watching "Surf's Up" this month, I soon watched "Happy Feet", another computer-animated penguin film which came out the year before the Sony Pictures Animation one. Both of those appear to be more popular than this computer-animated forest wildlife film, released the same year as the first of the two penguin films, and produced by the same company that gave us the second. However, even though "Open Season" is from the same company as "Surf's Up", I think it's about the same in quality as "Happy Feet", even if many would say that the 2006 Kingdom Feature Productions production is much better than this Sony Pictures Animation effort from the same year. For CGI fans, I don't think "Open Season" is that bad a film to check out, but I certainly wouldn't expect it to be the most entertaining, original, or visually impressive film of its kind, or else I think you will likely end up severely disappointed.
Jackson Booth-Millard
I saw pictures and clips of this computer animated cartoon movie and thought it was going to be an easy to like, so when I got the opportunity I had a look. Basically 900 pound brown grizzly bear Boog (Martin Lawrence) has been domesticated by his carer, park ranger Beth (Debra Messing), and become a star attraction on stage. One day he saves the life of one-antlered mule deer Elliot (Ashton Kutcher) from the truck bonnet of hunting fanatic Shaw (Gary Sinise), and he is annoyed by his new "friend". It is after a trip to a supermarket and a misunderstanding during a stage show that Beth is convinced Boog has become like a wild bear again, and sees no choice but to release him into the wild, on the verge of Open Season. With his perfect world taken away from him, Boog is now determined to get back to Beth, and it seems Elliot might be the only one who can help him do that. Along the way it is obvious that Boog has no idea to be a wild bear, with problems like eating and pooing in the woods, but at least he and Elliot are developing a strong bond. Shaw meanwhile is of course getting ready to go hunting for the two animals, with a variety of weapons, and is convinced that animals are getting too close to humans. Eventually after some of the forest animals dismissing them and not being able to help them, Elliot is captured and when it looks like Boog has a way to go home, he can't help but feel the need to help his friend. In the end, all the forest animals fight off the hunters and defeat Shaw, and Boog decides with Beth's agreement that he belongs in the woods, with his friend Elliot. Also starring Billy Connolly as squirrel McSquizzy, Jon Favreau as beaver Reilly, Family Guy's Patrick Warburton as mule deer Ian and 30 Rock's Jane Krakowski as mule deer Giselle. The animation isn't quite up to the scratch of Pixar, but the good casting, the shadow part and wild animal jokes and other laughs besides are fun, it is a alright animated comedy adventure. Worth watching!
