Who's in It: The voices of Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise, Debra Messing, Jon Favreau, Billy Connolly, Jane Krakowski
The Basics: Wow. An animated talking-animal movie. I can't tell you how long it's been since I've seen one of those. I wish Hollywood would make one of these every other week instead of being stingy and doling them out every few years like this.
What's the Deal? The truth is that this one is not so bad; I just wanted my pain acknowledged in public. And it's been a year of pain — 73 talking-animal movies and one talking-car movie and one talking-baseball movie, and I'm about done. But yeah, this one is not the worst of them. It saves itself with sweetness and a script that avoids the usual onslaught of pop-culture references and "hip" sarcasm and all the other crap that plagues this overdone genre.
What It's About: I know I should have written this part in "The Basics," but complaints had to come first. It's about animals that take back the forest from hunters, and it taught me a valuable lesson about Lawrence and Kutcher. That lesson is that I can deal with them when I don't have to look at them. I feel kind of liberated now. Bring on the animation featuring Tom Cruise!
Arrive Late: That way you can skip the opening bit in which Lawrence, as the bear, dances to a Talking Heads song and freaks you out and makes you think it's going to be like this for the entire film. But it's mostly OK after that. No Smash Mouth songs waiting patiently to ruin your day. In fact, former lead guy of The Replacements Paul Westerberg has written a nice little song score that doesn't clobber you over the head.
How It Stacks Up: Way better than The Wild and Barnyard and Everyone's Hero. Roughly equal to Over the Hedge and Ant Bully. Not as good as Cars. But really, you should just skip the animation and take the kids to see Lassie instead.