Open Season

I'd quite fancied seeing this ever since I watched the trailer some months ago. Those rabbits juts looked so funny. Any, here's the gist of the plot…

When Boog (Martin Lawrence), a 900lb Grizzly bear working in a ranger sideshow, saves a mule deer called Elliot (Ashton Kutcher) from the gun-happy, thoroughly nasty hunter Shaw (Gary Sinise), he becomes the target for both Shaw and Elliot, who wants him to be free.

However, Boog likes his domesticated life and wants nothing to do with Elliot but events and Elliot conspire against him and the pair soon find themselves released into the wild only a few days before the start of open season.

The hapless pair soon become lost and the brunt of ridicule from the native wildlife, mainly in the form of McSquizzy (Billy Connolly) and his cone chucking squirrel clan. Things are made worse when Boog, still trying to get home to the comfort of his garage den, wrecks the beaver dam and dumps the lot of them right in the middle of the hunting ground. So Boog and Elliot have to team up to survive and, with the help of the locals, make their way back to the high ground and safety.

I quite liked this although it got off to a slow start and I wasn't convinced about Martin Lawrence as a North American Grizzly. His voice was just a little too much Boyz'n'the'Hood for me.

That aside, the movie works quite well and it should a hit with the kids. There's plenty of humour and laughs for both kid and adults and what they do with those rabbits is hilarious. On top of that you've got mad Scottish squirrels, a couple of bitchin' skunks, a troop of disgruntled beavers, a herd of macho deer and a very strange porcupine.

Then there's the hunters and a sorry lot they are once they get involved with Boog, Elliot and the troops. It all makes for a pretty fun and enjoyable movie with plenty of laughs. One of the guys at work took his kid to see it in IMAX 3D and he really liked it. The CG animation is stylised to be more cartoon-like and isn't trying for the kind of near-realistic fur and feather like effects found in other animated movies but it works very well. Ashton Kutcher is extremely funny as the fast-talking Elliot and Connolly is...well, Connolly and very funny he is too f you like the idea of a Glaswegian squirrel.

Genre: Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family
My Rating: 7/10