It'll make you laugh. It was something that would remind you of some other movies. The animation wasn't exactly my favorite...better than Hoodwinked, but just not natural. The thing I hated most was Beth's feet. They were WAY oversized. Some of the humor was relatively crude, but not as crude as others. I liked the name PUNI-MART for the store! In the end, Sony Animation's first full-length CGI film was pretty good. Good for the dollar theater or free kids movie. Wouldn't pay 7 bucks, though.

Open Season was Sony Pictures Animation's foray into the CG animated world hitting in a year jam packed with animal themed animated films. The film had a reported budget of $85 million and earned $84.3 million at the box office, so it really was not much of a financial success.

Ashton Kutcher does a good job as the voice of a wussy one-antlered deer, and Martin Lawrence voices the tamed bear Boog. The two meet up... conflict occurs... the two team up to take back the wilderness... hilarity ensues.

As for its artistic impact, Open Season was able to take the now common "fart joke" to a new level with a gag featuring on-screen defecation. Way to go guys! Having said that, I actually liked this movie better than I expected I would. It has a lot of funny (less crass) moments including the trashing of a 7-11 style convenience mart, rampant abuse of rabbits, and an ever growing assemby of quirky woodland creatures. I am not sure if the anti-hunting message will convince any young hunters to turn in their rifles, but overall, the film does deliver some laughs.

As for the animation, the animals all look pretty good being slightly caricatured, but the humans look rather freakish. I do not expect great things from Sony in the future, they look to be following the trends as their next film, Surf's Up seeks to cash in on the currently hip Penguin market. For a first effort and some good humor, Open Season dodges a bullet and escapes with a B.

I expected much worse from this film and was pleasantly surprised. It's not as full of bad-taste humor as the look-and-feel would suggest. In fact, it's quite funny. It also gets points for originality--the heros aren't stock characters, the villain isn't a stock character (and is definitely someone you'd never care to meet) and the plot isn't a stock plot.

Still, it feels as if the film could have been improved with a little more work--the scary bits weren't really scary enough, and the emotional bits weren't really emotional enough. And a few of the character designs are so unattractive/unrealistic to be distracting. The bucks and the porcupine, primarily. (I liked the oddness on most of the other animals, and it fit Elliot's character to look deformed, unlike the other bucks.)

Still, if you want a cartoon for an hour an a half's amusement, there's no reason not to enjoy Open Season.

Not bad!

I went to see this movie tonight. For a first feature from Sony Animation this is not bad at all. The animation and art direction is spot on (almost on par with Pixar) and I enjoyed watching it. The humans were sooo much better animated then in Over the Hedge.

The voice acting was good. The voices fit the character's personality.

As for the story, it's ok. Nothing we haven't seen before. I think they could have spent a lot more time on character development.
The story just felt like something was...missing.

The jokes were hit and miss. Some fell flat while others were hilarious (bunnies anyone?).

So, it's a nice little film and fun for the family. I recommend it.

When the first teaser trailer for Open Season was released I was less than impressed. Partly because I am not a fan of Martin Lawrence or Ashton Kutcher and I figured the humour would be heavily influenced by them, and partly because the is yet another CG movie staring talking animals.

I love talking animal movies. The Lion King is one of my favourties. But I don't need several of these movies all in one year! Let's count them: Doogal, Ice Age 2, The Wild, Over the Hedge, Ant Bully, Barnyard, Open Season, and next month's Flushed Away and Happy Feet! That's nine movies in 2006! And that doesn't count the live action movies that came out this year like Garfield 2.
Open Season is the story of a domesticated bear named Boog (Martin Lawrence) who saves a young buck named Eliot (Ashton Kutcher) from the clutches of a hunter. Through a series of accidents Boog is set into the wild against his will to live his life. He doesn't know anything about living in the forest but with the help of his new woodland friends Boog will learn to adapt and also save the forest from the hunters who have just arrived for open hunting season. The movie also stars Jon Favreau, Gary Sinise, Jane Krakowski, Debra Messing and Billy Connolly.

If that plot sounds familiar it's because is has been done before. In fact, almost everything in this movie had been done before. It had the same cliche characters, racial stereotypes, potty humour, and story elements. The only thing that was new about this movie was that I have never seen anything defecate on screen before. That was a first. And whoever it was that they got to recorded the songs for this movie should have his guitar destroyed and his vocal cords pulled out. They were awful.

The animation was hit or miss. Boog had great design and wonderful animation but the rest of the minor characters didn't look like they existed in the same world. Even Eliot had a completely different design than the other deer in this movie. While the faces of the human resembled Sony Animation's other picture (Monster House) the animation was sloppy and the acting was stiff.

The thing I liked the most were the environments and sets of the picture. Boog lives in a small town where everything, including the humans have their own standards of proportion. The cars are short and squat, the buildings don't have perpendicular angles and the humans have really big feet. The forest, on the other hand, is full of lush trees, grass and streams that make you feel like you are really there. The town's surreal appeal represents the surreal world the Boog has made for himself. The realism of the forest shows that this is where Boog truly belongs. Nice to see some thought went into something here!

Other than that, I was not impressed by this movie. This was Sony Animation's first full CG picture (Monster House was motion capture) and next up on their plate is the less-than-impressive looking Surf's Up. I can't wait.

Open Season turned out to be funnier than I thought it would be. Although the story itself was pretty predictable, which they could have, I think, worked on a bit more, but the humor and characters made up for that.

Amazingly I didn't find any of the characters to be annoying. The voice acting was very well done and for the most parts the jokes were hilarious.

This film had some great animation, and the style was neat. It was more "tooney" like madagascar. The only thing that kind of bugged me were some of the secondary characters looked out of style, the skunks and some of the other deer mainly.

The music was ok, quite a few songs in there, which weren't too bad. They didn't add or take away from the movie. One of the ongoing musical themes was "Teddy Bear Picnic" which I found interesting. how they changed it from happy and light in some scenes to almost dramatic and frightening in tone.

This is one I'll probably buy when it hits DVD. Definitely worth checking out, one of the better animated films of 2006.