OPEN SEASON
US, 2006, 83 minutes, Colour.
Voices of: Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kuthcer, Gary's Sinese, Debra Messing, Billy Connolly, Georgia Engel, Jon Favreau, Jane Krakowski, Gordon Tootoosis, Patrick Warburton.
Directed by Roger Allers, Jill Cultin.
Despite 2006 having many (too many?) animated films with talking animals, Open Season is still very enjoyable. It is the first of Sony’s animation company’s films and has been very successful, straddling that strange gap between kids and parents.
What if a bear cub had been brought up by a nurse in a town and lived in a garage with his own en suite? What if he went on a bender in a supermarket, hypo on candy, cookies and sugar with a dopey deer mule that he had rescued from a dastardly hunter named Shaw who could not wait the three days until the start of open season? What would he do if taken out into the wild and found that there was no toilet plumbing?
These and many other questions are amusingly answered in Open Season.
Then it is Open Season declared and the animals who have been mocking the bear are all on the run ahead of the rifles. What would the mayhem be like? This too is amusingly answered.
The film does not take itself too seriously and benefits from Martin Lawrence doing his smart talk as Boog the Grizzly and Ashton Kutcher doing his slacker best as the deer, Elliot. Plenty of other good voices as well, Gary Sinise as the horrible Shaw, Debra Messing as the nurse and Billy Connolly as a Scots squirrel.
The message is clearly anti-hunting and pro-animals but it puts the emphasis on entertaining rather than preaching.
1. The growing popularity of animation films? Children’s audiences? Families? Films about animals? Animals like humans?
2. The visual style, look, the animation and drawings, the backgrounds, the forests and mountains, the animals? The voice cast? The musical score?
3. The issue of hunters, the open season, the stance of the hunters, Shaw and his shooting three days in advance? The animals wanting to outwit the hunters?
4. The town, the zoo, the forests, the mountains, the water? The range of creatures in the forest?
5. The focus on Boog, Martin Lawrence’s voice, the civilised bear, with his own pet bear, living in the house in comfort, en suite? Beth, in control, getting him to perform, the response of the audience? His encounter with Elliot? The supermarket, the sugar binge? His being projected out into the wilderness? His inability to cope? Mishaps?
6. Elliott, the mule-deer, the clash, his broken horn? Escaping from Shaw? Being saved by Boog? Their being stranded in the forest? Elliott, comic, gawky? Ashton Kutcher and his voice?
7. Beth, the human character, the ranger, in control, with Boog, presenting him at the zoo, the audience? Trying to cope with his sugar reaction?
8. In the forest, the range of the other creatures, the different animals, the different accents, French skunks, Scottish squirrels…?
9. Coping in the forest, gathering all the animals, the effect of the dam breaking? The comedy running together? And overcoming the hunters?
