>>REVIEW
OPEN SEASON
STARRING Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher
DIRECTED BY Roger Allers and Jill Culton
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Welcome to "part two" of Ashton Kutcher movie month. Last week Kutcher set his sights on the grownups with his Coast Guard drama The Guardian and now he takes aim at the little ones with an anti-hunting, pro-rabbit throwing animated feature Open Season.
After playing the completely cartoonish Kelso on That 70’s Show for seven seasons, the transition from actor to animated animal seems to be an obvious and logical career move for Kutcher and he easily runs away with a majority of the chuckles in this forest adventure.
Open Season revolves around Boog (Martin Lawrence), a domesticated, performing grizzly that is perfectly happy living in a garage, blissfully ignorant of the ways of the wild, until a slightly off-kilter deer named Elliot (Kutcher) turns his whole world upside down and lands him in the middle of the woods far from all he’s ever known. What follows is a whole lot of fun and laughs with just a hint of a "hunting is bad" subtext that may only be picked up by audiences that can grasp the subtleties of furry woodland creatures blowing up trucks in explosions worthy of a Michael Bay extravaganza.
Kutcher and Lawrence both bring some freshness to the world of talking animals and even though they never worked together during production, their vocal performances meld perfectly. Then again, it always helps to have a combination of supporting voice talents that are equally as impressive, including Patrick Warburton as Elliot’s rival Ian, the always-Scottish Billy Connelly as the turf-crazed squirrel McSquizzy and an almost unrecognizable Gary Sinise playing the out of control, paranoid hunter Shaw.
It’s this last character that might be the only stumbling block for some of the really young viewers as there are a couple of dark and downright creepy scenes involving Shaw and his array of weapons. It’s by no means violent, but for little minds, a crazy-eyed hunter walking through a dark cellar with a rifle and a lighter might be a bit much. For those raised on Elmer Fudd and his oft-firing rifle, it’s a flash to the past when "hunting wabbits" was totally PC.
Even with that slight touch of scary, Open Season will certainly give the kids exactly what they want to see; beavers dancing, a deer crapping, a sugar-drunk bear puking and the constant inappropriate misuse of innocent bunnies. |
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