Imagine you’ve been living in one house your entire life. You’re comfortable and don’t plan on leaving. You have everything you need, are surrounded by the people you love, and life is good. And then your lifestyle is taken away from you. Your home no longer exists. You have to find a way to survive.
Now imagine that someone makes a movie about this story. And it’s in cartoon form.
Sounds absurd but it’s called “Over the Hedge” and it’s in theatres today. It’s about that above scenario, except it’s not humans who have to adjust to a culture shock ? it’s animals.
Let’s back up for a second.
The film isn’t a tragic tale about torturing animals. It’s a comedy, but it examines the way humans live and how our lifestyles interfere with nature ? subtly, but it’s present.
Children will enjoy the story of a raccoon named RJ (Bruce Willis) who moves to the forest and befriends a group of animals. They venture over the hedge into suburbia to collect food from the humans. They see RJ as a brave role model, unaware he needs the food to repay an unforgiving bear.
Adults may see past the basic storyline. Here are animals that wake up after winter ends and realize that their forest has shrunk. What was the rest of their forest is now a city. To survive, they need food. To get food, they need to steal it from the suburbanites.
Tim Johnson, director of the film, thinks people will see a reflection of their consumer lifestyle.
“The best films give you something to talk about in the car on the way home. It has something to say about what it means to expand into a forest and build more homes,” he told andPOP recently while in Toronto to promote the film.
Johnson said he did not want it to seem like the film was trying to preach values upon the viewers.
“From the animals point of view, Americans have it pretty good. When they look over the hedge from the forest, they have all of the world of convenience. Our goal was to remind people how good they have it, not to make it seem like it’s a nasty thing to live like they do,” says Johnson, who also directed “Antz” and “Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas.”
Animator David Burgess hopes the older crowd will leave the film looking at things a little bit differently.
“These animals are seeing our world from a very different perspective than they’re used to and they see it differently. And different is good. Any time you can look at something with your left brain versus your right brain, that’s good for you as a person and it takes you out of your comfort zone,” Burgess says.
But don’t think it’s all about solemnity. “Over the Hedge” might make you think about the social impacts of a suburban lifestyle, but will also allow you to escape from it.
You will find that you begin to root for RJ, even though he is a conman.
Johnson said the hardest part of directing the film was creating RJ in a way that he engages people, not makes them angry towards him. One of the ways this was done was through Willis’ voice work and the reemergence of one of Willis’ classic characters.
“Bruce put so much fun and vulnerability into his voice,” Johnson said. “When I first met Bruce, I said, ‘I really miss David Addison (from the 1980’s show Moonlighting),’ and he said, ‘I do too and I haven?t played him in a long time.’ Bruce said he was sick of saving the world. The direction for him was to constantly find the vulnerable way to play the line. The first thing we did was having him raise his register to keep the character charming. Always show that he’s a bad liar. Good liars are creeps but bad liars you sympathize with.”
