Open Season -- 2006 -- PG

What I expected from this film from Sony was another kid flick like Madagascar or Barnyard or The Wild, since this seemed to be Sony's answer to that vein of films. What I actually got was a film that showed some real humor, a bit of intelligence, and just some decent storytelling.

We open with a bear who is living with a park ranger who acts like his mother...and he acts like a child. It's actually amusing. Through a series of misadventures and cleverly constructed dual-meaning scenes, the bear is thrown into the forest and forced to fend for himself. He decides he wants to go back home, and employs the very critter that got him thrown out to begin with to get him back. During their journey (which, of course, takes them no where since the problematic deer has no idea where anything is), he learns how to fend for himself and he ends up facing the real decision as to whether he should stay in the forest or go back to his plush home life of wheel of fortune and indoor plumbing.

Too many times, these talking animal movies are either too human or just too slapstick to be worth watching, but this one maintains a careful balance between the animals behaving like animals, but also acting a little humanistic as well. It creates multiple comedic moments that play out fairly well a lot of the time. The characters themselves were fairly well constructed creating some clear motivations and reasoning behind their activities. The deer got annoying, but I suspect that was his purpose, and he served to up the comedic factor quite a bit at times.

The film moved pretty well throughout and the story arcked very naturally. It was very funny over and over, and I laughed quite a bit throughout. The early scene where the bear and deer have a confrontation behind a backlit curtain was absolutely hilarious. I watched it with the kids and my wife and brother, and we were all just rolling.

Come down to a touchy and sensible ending, and its done. A surprisingly well done animated film in a time when animated films are turning to pure schlock.