Cars and Over The Hedge

[Lidless]

Cars

The headline review on BoxOfficeMojo summed it up for me.

"Strong Visuals Offset Pixar’s Weak Story"

The visuals are superb - especially lights. In some places, it didn't even look like animation. However, the story is as old as old can be. Cliche and stereotype hell. Cocky, ambitious youngster learns Values from the Simple Folk. I've seen the exact same story in many, many human features, and this feature boasted six screenwriters, yes, six.

A few jokes here and there, a few nice touches, but most laughs are reserved for the scenes during the credits.

Animation 5/5, story 0/5.

5/10



Over The Hedge

An excellent movie that in parts captures the tone of the comics, ie. appealing to all and having the odd swipe at the human condition from an outsiders point of view. Quite funny, and the last ten minutes are comic genius. Caffeine, that's all I'm saying.

As for Cars, the animation is spectacular, even though they had a more difficult job with animals.

Animation 5/5, story 3/5.

8/10

[axordil]

Haven't seen Cars, probably won't (for various reasons), but Over the Hedge was pretty fun, for me and my 3-year old both (his first big-screen movie). I did find myself thinking that in some ways 3-D animation is less inherently comic than 2-D...the Chuck Jones-style chase sequence was fun to look at, but in a strange way the dimensionality and perspective detracted from the humor for me.