Movie Review Open Season

Open Season (2006) 

Directed by Roger Allers, Jill Cullen

Written by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, Nate Maulden

Starring Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise, Debra Messing, Jon Favreau 

Release Date September 29th, 2005

Published September 30th, 2005

Sony Pictures Animation is brand new to the computer animation game. Their first feature Monster House, with producer Robert Zemeckis, was a fun, clever, kid friendly concept that would have benefited from a better release date. The second feature from Sony is equally as fun, though not quite as clever, and shows that Sony may be the first big studio animation arm to be truly competitive with Pixar in terms of creating fully integrated animated films with appeal beyond the child audience.

Monster House is a better, more accomplished example of the quality of Sony's work, but the new animated picture Open Season has just enough quality work to show Sony's potential.

Martin Lawrence gives voice to Boog in Open Season, a bear who has been domesticated. Living in the garage of a caring forest ranger (Debra Messing); Boog has his TV, nine square meals a day and he's even learned how to use the toilet. His domestic bliss is upended when he meets Elliott (Ashton Kutcher). Poor Elliott has been captured by an evil hunter (Gary Sinise) and strapped to the hood of the hunters truck.

Boog, on a day in the city with his forest ranger pal, see's Elliott and helps him escape. Elliott, thinking he has made a new best friend forever, follows Boog home and entices him out of the garage for a night on the town. The two end up vandalizing a mini-mart, an offense that causes the local sheriff to force the forest ranger to release Boog into the wild.

Never having had to survive on his own, Boog finds his new life in the forest to be, pardon the pun, un-bear-able. So, with Elliott's help, Boog tries to find his way back to the garage. Along the way he earns the ire of almost every other creature in the forest, especially after he crushes the local beaver dam and flushes everyone into the valley where hunters are awaiting the opening of hunting season.

Part of the strategy of Sony Pictures Animation is working with talented artists with great track records. On Monster House they worked with a rookie director, Gil Kenan, but backed him up with the proven talent of producer Robert Zemeckis. On Open Season Sony worked with director Roger Allers who directed the all time animated classic The Lion King.

Open Season does not compare with The Lion King in terms of the quality of its storytelling but the animation of Open Season is at times the equal of any and all of the great animated pictures, digital or otherwise. The forest landscapes of Open Season are absolutely gorgeous which is strangely at odds with the otherwise mundane  talking animals storyline. The animation tends to overwhelm a story beneath the dignity of the artistry of the animation.

Not that the story of Open Season isn't cute or funny, it is, but the grand animation of Open Season would be better suited to a more dramatic feature, ala The Lion King.

Part of the fun of Open Season is the voice work of Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher. These two actors, who have struggled mightily in their live action work, are dynamic vocalists in Open Season. Lawrence does a terrific job of channeling the child-like innocence of Boog and combining it with an attitude of entitlement of a very spoiled child. As Boog becomes more mature, Lawrence channels his usual bravado and good humor into Boog to great effect.

Kutcher is a natural for voicework. He is naturally over the top and exemplifies boundless energy, as he so often showed on That 70's Show. Elliott, like TV's Michael Kelso, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he has a big heart and that comes through in his voice. He just wants to be liked, he just wants to make friends and in that sense he is very reminiscent of another beloved animated sidekick Eddie Murphy's Donkey from the Shrek movies.

If the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals made an animated feature, I'm guessing it would look alot like Open Season. The film is like PETA propaganda. The hunters are mouth breathing morons and seething villains who hunt for the joy of the kill and not merely for sport. The animals are, of course, cute and smart and essentially more human than their human counterparts.

I am a little concerned about one thing about this animated tale of a grizzly bear who is kept as a pet. There was a documentary last year called Grizzly Man in which a man named Timothy Treadwell failed to understand how dangerous the grizzly bear truly is. Treadwell convinced himself that the bears were his friends, he even named them like pets. Timothy Treadwell died, eaten by his pals the grizzly's. Parents, be sure to make your children understand that Grizzly bear's are not pets.

If Sony Pictures Animation is going to compete with the gold standard set by Pixar they will need to do a little better than Open Season. That said, Open Season; in its lovely animation and wide appeal story, does demonstrate the potential of Sony's animated arm. Working with talented directors like Roger Allers is definitely a sign of the commitment of the company to the quality of their work.

The kids will love the talking animals and the adventure stories and mom and dad won't be bored thanks to the remarkable animation that often invites audiences just to gaze at it forgetting for a moment the mundane story.