WARNING!!!::POSSIBLE SPOILERS::WARNING!!!

Oh, man! I laughed, I cried, it moved me, Bob! I usually restrain myself from VeggieTales quoting, but I couldn't help it. This was a hope-your-theater-has-rocking-seats comedy! The animals (dare I say it?) cute! The exaggeration is hilarious.

Ah, but yet another CGI movie. Just sick and tired of this sick and tiring trend!

When RJ goes hungry, he does what any scavenger would do: steal, From who other than the most overfed bear in the world! Here, the issue of thievery is adressed indirectly.

I always love it when you take a classic tale and make it anew. The family accepts the desperate guy who's slick and fresh, and they are tricked (like when he was flipping through the channels). The deception issue is adressed.

When he decides to help the other animals instead of himself, selflessness is adressed.

But I personally have no idea what they were saying with Stella and Tiger.

How do you go about making an animated movie with humor for adults that doesn't have(too much) "nudge nudge" pop culture references? Dreamworks has the answer with Over the Hedge.

This movie. . . wow. It's just so much fun. Part of the reason it works is because its humor doesn't rely too much on jokes but more on the quirkiness of the characters and situations and on the just perfect facial expressions. But probably a lot of people didn't realize that Over the Hedge was a spot on parody an the average American society's rampant obsession with consumerism. Yeah, okay. The typical feel-good cliches are here, but for my money it works better here than with Cars.

Speaking of characters, they were all brilliant and fun. But it was RJ, Stella, and Hammy that really stole the show. And I'm thankful that someone finally figured out how to make a computer generated animal movie without making the characters look weird. We'll probably never see a return to animal movies in the style of Bambi and The Fox and the Hound, but Over the Hedge is top notch stuff. Refreshing after all the middling to garbage stuff Dreamworks has been putting out.

This has to be one of the most enjoyable cartoons I've seen in a while. Over the Hedge has laughs, warmth, cute n fuzzy animals, and multiple explosions timed for perfect slapstick effect. The plot and characters aren't knock-off-your-socks original, but they are likeable characters, amusingly designed, well-animated, and downright cuddly. The humans had a certain Shrek-ky look to them, but I suppose that must be put down to studio style.

RJ the raccoon is doomed to die unless he replaces the hoard of goodies he stole (and lost) from Vinnie the Bear by the full moon. He hits on a scheme to save his skin when he discovers a group of simple woodland creatures newly hemmed in by Suburbia. RJ will train them to loot enough food from the humans to repay the bear.

Frankly, we know exactly where the plot is going to go from here. But--and Dreamworks did this very well--the fun was in getting there. Wild exaggeration is used to great humorous effect throughout the movie--madcap destruction has never been so funny.

Part of me wants to give four stars to Over the Hedge, but somehow it just didn't QUITE make it.

"Over the Hedge" is a good movie... it has endearing characters, great voice actors, some incredibly funny sight-gags (the nacho nuke is my personal favourite).

So why only 3 stars? Because it's not a GREAT movie.

Other reviewers have already said it, but it's worth repeating. The story arc is predictable, but that's a sin that in a great movie we forgive. Even here, the quality of the humour makes the film as a whole worth watching--where in a lesser film, we would be much more irritated by knowing how it's all going to end. As the old saying goes, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.

It's kind of a strange notion, but half way through this film I began comparing the relationship between Verne and RJ to that of Woody and Buzz from "Toy Story". One character who is a leader of his 'family' and who is usurped by a somewhat crazy outsider with his own agenda. Both films even had a little montage sequence showing how the former leader is being pushed further and further to the edge of the group. And yet, in "Over the Hedge" I didn't feel nearly as connected to Verne's plight--possibly because it gets tangled with RJ's duplicity.

Anyways, I still say the humour and the characters make this one worth renting.

My God, I can barely believe it. After making, by my count, 9 movies which varied from awful to bearable, Dreamworks have made a good film!

I rented this almost out of a sense of obligation to review it, expecting more Madagasgar / Cimmarron /Shrek2 /Sinbad /Prince of Egypt/ Shark Tale/ El Dorado, nerve grating stuff which has made Dreamworks my least favourite of the major studios. I kept waiting for it to get bad. About a third of the way through I realised it wasn't going to.

I'm not going to go through the plot, as that's been outlined below. Oh, alright - let's say if I can do it real fast.

Raccoon steals bear's food. Bear says replace in one week or you're dead. Raccoon comes upon hibernating scavenger animals who have just woken up to find a subdivision on the other side of huge hedge. Raccoon plots to get them to help steal food from humans to give to bear.

Right. Well anyway, what made this film work for me? First it wasn't filled with annoying pop culture references (unless 'Citizen Kane' counts), the actors were well suited to the voices (I deliberately didn't read who the actors were, and the only one I recognised was Wanda Sykes, who is, you must admit, a bit hard to miss). The plot was pretty predictable. You knew roughly how things were going to turn out; just not how they were going to get there, but this wasn't a problem for me. After a bit of manic, shrieking anime recently I could use something relatively sweet and simple like this (though I must warn you, the 'cages' scene near the end is actually pretty disturbing if it sets off the same association it did with me, but kids aren't going to get it at all, unless you've been letting them watch Schindler's List). This is over with pretty quick, and of course you know nothing bad's really going to happen.

The characters look great (especially the opposums), and even if they probably pinched Scrat from Ice Age. And the music by Ben Folds is perfect. The best soundtrack songs I've heard in years. And the bits that could have been sugary and horrible are actually quite touching sometimes.

The one problem is the humans. It looks like they farmed them out to some students in Fiji who haven't updated their software since 1996. I have no idea why they still can't get humans to not look blocky and awkward when everything else is so deftly done, but nevermind - they don't occupy an awful lot of screentime.

Maybe I'm just in an easily pleased mood, but I'd say this is at least Dreamworks best animated film since 'Antz', which I believe was their first, back 8 years ago. Have they been here and read my review of 'Shark Tale' or something?

Dunno what else to say. Except, let's see you do it twice in a row, maybe?

I don’t why, but a strange part of me wanted to go see this, call it impulsiveness, whimsy, a love of the fairly cutesy character design or something to do with the fact that it’s a CG film that isn’t trying to be as realistic as possible yet works within its own style; whatever the reason I just did.

One thing it wasn’t anything to do with was the comic strip, of which I didn’t know even existed until after I saw the film, yet it did suggest that these characters had been developed sometime before the film; certainly they had better characterization here than in other, higher profile films I’ve seen of late. This is, of course, a good thing, since the actual plot is nothing to shout home about, isn’t anything original; so it needs the characters to keep it all together.

When you have a pedestrian by-the-numbers plot (which unfortunately this film has), some references to American consumer habits and the usual pop-culture subject (thankfully not as many here as in other Dreamworks films): the only hope is that you have a fun ride in store for the audience as compensation and a fun ride is certainly the thing that this film has.

The characters are likeable if somewhat by the numbers, RJ is the usual raccoon/con-artist out to fox a family of naïve animal misfits into getting the stuff he needs in order to pay off his unfortunate debt with a angry bear. It’s a pretty straightforward trip with little in the way of surprises. Like I said the characters are the best part of the show, RJ is RJ, the fact that he is voiced by Bruce Willis is academic; the character is strong enough to survive on his own and he is ultimately likeable. Verne works great as a straight tortoise to RJ’s conniving schemes and is generally the most developed of the family. Shatner gets to do his beloved overacting once more, yet it works well due to him voicing a possum, which sort of is nature’s actor. Hammy, the hyperactive squirrel who can run as fast as anything generally steals every scene he’s in; he’s basically a one-joke character but he does helps to give the film a much needed manic quality (even if the nut jokes get a bit much). The other characters tend not to have enough personality or screen time to develop one to bear any real mentioning.

It enjoyable enough, like potato chips or sweets are, it just lacks that certain something to spring it toward greatest. Then I don’t think it was trying to reach that level, it was just trying to be a bit of fun and in that it succeeds totally. I probably get it when it comes out here on DVD in December and who knows maybe it'll grow on me some more.

EDIT: incidently, 3 stars was the mark I originally played with giving it.

This is my favorite animated film, and I recommend it to anyone!\r\n\r\nThis is Dreamworks\' best movie, and is even better than Pixar\'s movies.\r\n\r\nI love RJ, Hammy, Ozzie, and Heather! I hate Cars, for two reasons: it is getting better reviews than Over the Hedge. And it just plain sucks.

I certainly wasn't disappointed with this film. I was worried it wouldn't meet my expectations, but it surpassed them. It wasn't brilliant, but it was pretty damn good.
Being a huge fan of all things furry, I adored all of the characters. Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara are fantastic as the porcupines, and William Shatner is hilarious as Ozzie the possum. RJ is not just a raccoon with Bruce Willis' voice; Bruce Willis *is* RJ, and vice versa. But the real star is the hyperactive red squirrel, Hammy, voiced by Steve Carell.
Whereas Madagascar's humour relied on the inclusion of dozens of pop culture references (which wasn't at all bad; I quite enjoyed Madagascar), Over the Hedge is a lot more satirical. It pokes fun at consumerism, how humanity is basically screwing up the planet. But it does so with good humour, without being preachy in the least.

Not bad. Definantly not Dreamwork's best film but not bad.

It had an okay story and some really great animal animation.

The human animation however was very stiff. Humans have never been Dreamwork's strongpoint.

Overall it was a fun little film. It had some funny moments and some good animation. I could tell a lot of work went into it.

It's not as good as Madagascar but MUCH better than Shrek.

James

Over the Hedge has some great characters, wonderful animation, but a very predictable plot. The film is based off of a comic strip of the same name. The story starts off with Rj, the raccoon. He gets caught stealing from Vincent, the bear. Vincent promises to kill RJ if he doesn't return everything that was stolen. RJ then proceeds to use a "family" of animals, (which consists of a turtle, possums, a squirrel, porcupines, and a skunk) to get everything he needs to repay the bear. They welcome him into their "family" and he begins to feel bad for what he's done and in the end turn good guy.

The characters are the strong point of the film. Had it not been for the strong main characters, and the humor, this film would be boring since the story is quite predictable. The voice cast was excellent, and the animation is great. I really like the style that was used. The parts of score I caught were pretty good as well.

Overall it was a pretty good movie. This is one I might buy when it hits DVD and would recommend it for a rent.