{"id":6426,"date":"2009-10-28T07:00:15","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T23:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=6426"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:18:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:18:50","slug":"open-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/10\/28\/open-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-open-season-1\" Open Season<\/a><\/em> (2006) \u2013 on rental. Ling was asking the other day if I could start renting a few more animated films that she can watch with Hannah at home. So, I\u2019ve been looking through the past couple of years worth of such films and adding them to the rental queue.<\/p>\n

Open Season<\/em> is the first of two animated movies to arrive yesterday (the other was Happy Feet<\/em>). The reviews for this Sony Pictures Entertainment was somewhat damning back then. But even forewarned and thus willing to be a little more indulgent than normal for any of the film\u2019s deficiencies, one viewing later, I\u2019ve concluded that Open Season <\/em>is really, really<\/strong><\/em> bad.<\/p>\n

The story is basically about a domesticated 900-pound grizzly bear, Boog, who\u2019s having a nice living in a small town as a performing bear. His comfortable life gets turned upside down when he runs into a mule deer, Elliot, from the surrounding forests and who\u2019s being hunted by a fanatical game hunter, Shaw. Boog gets banished to the forests when he first reverts to his natural element i.e. raiding a candy store. The rest of the film is about his adjustments to the wild and how he leads his fellow animals to resist the game hunters arriving for the open hunting season.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of similarity between this film and Madagascar<\/em> and to a lesser degree Over the Hedge<\/em> which were both released at about the same time period \u2013 all three films are about animals who switch between natural and domesticated habitats and the slapstick-esque and learning adjustments necessary.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, while the first Madagascar <\/em>was mildly enjoyable (saved in huge part by the antics of the four militant penguins) and Over the Hedge<\/em> very<\/em> enjoyable, Open Season<\/em> was a capital fail on so many counts. I\u2019m willing to go with simplistic and unimaginative stories given its intended audience. But the characters: right from the two leads \u2013 Boog and Elliot \u2013 are just plain annoying and unsympathetic. Boog was voiced by Martin Lawrence \u2013 imagine, a Black American actor voicing a grizzly bear with all the voice traits of African Americans \u2013 and Elliot, Ashton Kutcher \u2013 whose voice befits the character but the character isn\u2019t given sufficient personality to leave any sort of impression outside of being Boog\u2019s spoil and partner-in-crime. You won\u2019t care about the bonding and \u2018buddy\u2019-relationship between two, which is key to buying-in for the film.<\/p>\n

The atrocious voice miscasting doesn\u2019t stop with Lawrence\u2019s Boog. Even worst is Scottish actor Billy Connolly\u2019s take on a fanatical and defensive squirrel. I like Connolly \u2013 especially from his role in The Man Who Sued God<\/em><\/a> \u2013 and his voice timbre is unique. But this is a squirrel that speaks with a strong Scottish accent + given mind-numbing lines + given nothing to do except throw nuts at approaching creatures and men. It just didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

And for an animated film that\u2019s supposedly comedic in genre, the film just isn\u2019t funny. There\u2019re about two jokes in the entire film\u2019s 86 minute run length that elicited a chuckle \u2013 one to do with what beavers eat during lunch time, and another about a Deer-jock trying to marshal his troop of minions \u2013 but every other gag was a clunker that either got from me a non-reaction or \u2013 worst still \u2013 a groan. The climatic \u2018final battle\u2019 in which the animals face off the band of game hunters was all work-manlike with no humor \u2013 even when it\u2019s based on such golden material like hurling forks and spoons using the elasticity of underwear and brassieres.<\/p>\n

Between Star Wars: The Clone Wars<\/em> which I\u2019ve already one-starred, Open Season<\/em> is even worse. Apart from the two aforementioned jokes, there\u2019s nothing else in this film that worked for me. Even Ling looked bored.<\/p>\n

This one gets ZERO stars.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Open Season (2006) \u2013 on rental. Ling was asking the other day if I could start renting a few more animated films that she can watch with Hannah at home. So, I\u2019ve been looking through the past couple of years<\/p>\n

Read More Open Season<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}