DVD The Nut Job
Run time: 85 min
Rating: 5.8
Genres: Animation | Adventure | Comedy
Director: Peter Lepeniotis
Writers: Lorne Cameron, Peter Lepeniotis
Stars: Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Liam Neeson
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Storyline In a city park, Surly the Squirrel has finally gone too far with his latest caper leading to the animal community’s winter food cache being destroyed. Now exiled, Surly and his rat buddy’s, Buddy, collective nightmare on the streets ends when they discover a nut store to raid. Meanwhile, the squirrels, the heroic Andie and the ditsy Grayson, are charged by Raccoon to find a new food source and Andie runs into Surly. With no other options, she arranges a deal to help in Surly’s heist for the colony, even while Surly fully intends to betray it. However, there is more going on with the nut store being a front for bank robbers while Raccoon has his own agenda to ensure his own power. In the mayhem to come, Surly finds himself challenged in ways he never expected and discovering the real prize to treasure in this adventure. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com) |
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Plot Keywords: squirrel, raccoon, rat, heist, bank robbery | |
Details: Country: Canada, South Korea, USA Release Date: 1 August 2014 (UK) |
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Box Office Budget: $42,000,000 (estimated) Opening Weekend: $25,700,000 (USA) (17 January 2014) Gross: $64,238,770 (USA) (2 May 2014) |
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4 comments
The Nut Job looks fantastic. Try to ignore the trailer, and if possible, the inconsistent soundtrack, too. Pay attention to the subtle nod to the 50's, present in all the background details: The rooms, the cars, the human characters. It looks great. The attention to visual detail is spot on. So kudos to the people in charge of making this look the way it does.
The story itself has promise: A nut heist that runs concurrently with a bank heist, the squirrel storyline paralleling the human one. As you can imagine, there are cheap jokes and nut puns a plenty, but at least the younger children in the theatre will be entertained. Any flaws present in the Nut Job have nothing to do with the way it looks. And if anything, that's what saves it.
Because I was walking into this expecting it to suck, it was nice to know that it actually wasn't that bad.
I do have to agree with one reviewer about the animation being what saves the movie, because it really does look good.
As far as everything else goes, chances are this one won't veer too far from your expectations. Plenty of tired jokes abound, also some fart jokes which I found to be funny, but that's just because I'm really childish. Since this is a PG movie there really aren't that many nut puns, which was actually kind of disappointing.
As for the plot line, it's pretty much the usual clichéd family movie setup: Main character is really self-centered, main character goes out on his own to prove he doesn't need anybody (actually he's kicked out but you get the idea), main villain plots evil scheme against main character's former friends, main character has a change of heart, main character reconciles with friends and saves the day.
Despite these shortcomings, I actually kind of enjoyed this one, the animation was good, and some parts were kind of funny. What can I say? I have a soft spot for this stuff! I'm sure the younger children will love it, there were two kids in the theater I was in laughing their heads off.
I saw this movie tonight with my two daughters. We were looking forward to seeing it as the trailers looked fairly entertaining. About 10 minutes in, my 4 year old say to me: "Daddy, why isn't this movie making us laugh?" Perfectly put! The movie makes a terrible attempt at humor (unless you think beavers farting is hilarious). There is no original humor in this movie. Every time a joke was made, my wife and I looked at each other and shook our head in utter disgust. The characters are lame and the plot is dumb. Save your money. This movie is not even worth a $1.29 redbox DVD rental, which I'm sure redbox will have in its inventory very soon. STAY AWAY! It was so terrible, we walked out in the middle when both of my daughters kept asking to go home. I wanted to ask the theater to provide a refund for being such a terrible movie, but felt too stupid to admit that I bought 4 tickets.
Surly, an adjective and a name apparently, embarks on an adventure to obtain food for the approaching winter. He runs across some wacky characters and antics ensue. The Good: Art- The time spent on the animal and human designs was readily apparent throughout the film. I could pick out individual hairs in the animals' coats. I also liked that the artists paid attention to the animals' mouths. They were not just mere flaps of skin covering teeth, but it looked like the mouth region actually had some depth, that the lips were also 3D along with the rest of the animal. The humans had a distinct look and style about them that made me think of 2D cartoons. Big and imposing, shady and dangerous, cute and cuddly, the artwork certainly helped draw a person in. Ambition- The Nut Job tried to draw on several genres of film. It attempts to reshape these stories and form into a family friendly movie. I could spot a crime drama, a voyage of self discovery, a tale of redemption and rejoining society, just to name a few. The film also provided some rudimentary information about the animal species through dialogue, so it did have some educational moments. Whether or not the film succeeded in its ambitions will be covered in the not-so-good section. The Not-So-Good: Pacing- What a colossal mess. The Nut Job is a short 86 minutes and the film tried to show at least three different story arcs. The audience is not shown how the characters will respond to any event because the next event is following hot on the heels of its predecessor. Because of this, any connection or concern for the characters is lost in the fray of action and fart jokes…yes, I'll get there too. Characters- Unfortunately the pacing of the film allows the survival of only the most basic character types. Might as well forget about character development too. And learning. And change for the better. Comedy- I had hoped that the family film genre had grown past this, I really did. Situational and character-based comedy has made significant headway into the family films. Granted it may be a little silly to laugh at Mr. Potato-Head's parts stuck in a flour tortilla, but I found it to be incredibly funny. Or how about when a mermaid becomes a human and, as a result of misguiding information told to her in a previous scene, she puts a fork and a pipe to hilarious use at the dinner table. Fart jokes. Maybe with the compressed story arcs, the only form of comic relief could come from this. The Nut Job tried to meld several different genres and in so doing, did not execute any of them well. You've seen better representatives of the genres attempted here and I'd suggest seeing them instead. 4/10