Here’s an idea, just save yourself some time and go back and watch Over the Hedge again.
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“The Nut Job” features the voice of Will Arnett as a sarcastic squirrell amongst a cast of other animals trying to find a way to stay fed over the winter by planning to steal a large amount of nuts from a local store, and what happens when the journey leads them into direct confrontation with some humans trying to pull a heist of their own. All this while other humans sit in a theater hoping their kids are at least enjoying a little bit of this torture they paid $50 to endure for an hour and a half… or maybe that was just my theater. That’s right, the nut job is easily one of the worst animated films I’ve ever seen. Seriously, this was rough.
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Now, I was able to find one good thing in the movie which of course, by default, will be the best thing, and that’s that the central plot idea of having an animal heist within a human heist has some serious potential to be clever and engaging. You can see the two heists paralleling each other in interesting ways, or showing how the humans and animals differ in the way they approach the job, or maybe fun interplay between the way each succeeds or fails… Well, you could see that, if they had chosen to do anything like that that is. But they didn’t. Instead the human heist just plays as a boring and distracting background to an already underwhelming main story. Why is it so underwhelming?
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Really I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that the movie makes us hate the one character we are supposed to root for. Will Arnett’s “Surly” is as unlikeable an animated protagonist as I’ve ever seen, making it difficult to even care if he ever gets his bounty or his beauty. Not to mention the immature humor ratio in this one is through the roof, choosing to attempt to get laughs out of bodily noises and crass sarcasm rather than anything genuinely funny. Also, just a question, how many nut puns are you willing to sit through? If the answer is anywhere under a dozen, go ahead and skip this one, it’s not for you. And what’s strange is they aren’t even really puns. It’s like a character says, “isn’t that nuts?” and I think we are all supposed to laugh. and rats. “Nuts” and “Rats”, those are the key words. Whenever you hear one of them look around to see whose doubled over in laughter, my guess is you’ll find more napping than laughing, who knows maybe even a bit of resigned sobbing.
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Overall, The Nut Job is a swing and a miss in almost every way. Even though the structuring of the premise held promise, an unlikeable “Surly” lead and a misunderstanding of what reall humor is can’t steal anything above a D-
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Thanks for checking out this Your Movie Friend review, stay tuned for this review’s “Best Ever” challenge here in bit but first, I’m going to put up some stuff you can click over in this area. If you’d like to subscribe, which I would much appreciate, you can do so by clicking the big gray subscribe button. Want to see more? You can click here to see reviews for Ride Along, I Frankenstein, and Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit. You can also Click the logo up here to go to yourmoviefriend.com where you can search by title for reviews. And finally this review’s “Best Ever” Challenge, where you name the best movie ever in a particular category and also try to identify my choice. For this one tell me what is “the best heist movie ever”. Mine could only exist if there were 7 more giant bodies of water. Drop your own answer and a guess at mine in the comments and first person to guess mine gets a point! Thanks and don’t forget to subscribe!