In actuality, the film is about none of these things, but it doesn't really matter. CGI-animated films have become a dime a dozen these days, and while the technology is new, the stories remain interchangeable, always stuck to the same formula.

Let's watch the formula in action. Step One: Find a group of characters, usually something you couldn't film in live-action like fish, toys, or unicellular organisms. In this case, it's a group of forest animals led by Vern the Turtle (Garry Shandling). Step Two: Introduce a rogue character, loveable but with a shady agenda. Enter RJ (Bruce Willis), a fast-talking raccoon that has one week to gather a large supply of food or else he'll end up the supper of an angry bear. Step Three: Have the loveable-but-shady character grow to love the other characters (all while he's screwing them over), so that eventually the character will have a change of heart and redeem himself at just the right moment. Sure enough, RJ dupes the other animals into helping him gather food from a local suburb, and as they come to accept him into their family, he begins to question if whether or not long-term con jobs are really the best way to make friends.

"Over the Hedge" does everything you expect it would, never deviating once from a story we've seen play out a million times over. Even worse, there's nothing else here that redeems this fact. The animation is blocky and surprisingly ugly. The film score is run-of-the-mill "adventure music," sometimes interrupted by inappropriately-placed Ben Folds songs. The humor falls flat (although there are enough clever jabs at suburban consumerism scattered throughout to make me think that a sharper, more satirical version of the script might have existed at one point). Worst of all, the film assembles a fantastic cast of voice talent and then completely squanders it. Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, William Shatner, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, and others are all on-hand. Their voices, however, sound bored and rushed, almost as if they were recorded as an after-thought. And, with the possible exceptions of Carell and Shatner, these fantastic actors are given absolutely nothing to do.

While very little kids might perhaps like this film for all the cuddly critters, anyone older than six will be bored to tears. I'm not sure how many bad CGI-films we'll have to sit through before the studios decide to offer us something fresh. A wise man once said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But then again, I bet that guy never had to sit through "Over the Hedge."

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