Open Season
Here's Sony Pictures' promo copy for the new kids' movie Open Season:
In Open Season, the first feature-length animated film from Sony Pictures Animation, Boog (Martin Lawrence), a happily domesticated grizzly bear, has his perfect world turned upside-down after he meets Elliott (Ashton Kutcher), a scrawny, fast-talking wild mule deer.
The hyper and playful smaller buddy who teams up with the reluctant main character for misadventures. Sounds great, eh? Maybe if it weren't a third-rate ripoff of Shrek, it might be.
Boog and Elliott are chased by hunters (including one paranoid hick greaseball named Shaw who imagines that the animals are conspiring against mankind) but finally gather up the other forest creatures to fight back. The best characters in the film are the small ones, such as the Scottish squirrels whose leader is voiced by Billy Connolly.
The best thing about the film is its length; at just over an hour, it manages to come in at around fifteeen minutes shy of becoming godawful, and instead hovers around the low end of mediocrity.
Derivitive, boring, and stubbornly uninspired, Open Season is a film that will leave even younger kids fighting to stay awake. Adults with an IQ over about 80 will know exactly where the film is going after a few minutes, and likely not have the patience to watch it unfold. While the animation is interesting, the script is desperately pedestrian. If this is a the best that the animation arm of Sony Pictures can do, the studio might as well close up shop.
