Open Season with Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher
Don’t Rush to Put Open Season in Your Sights
When I reviewed Over the Hedge I wrote that it was an animated movie that wanted to be good for you, like a high fiber cereal.
Open Season, another animated movie featuring furry forest creatures has no such ambitions. It’s a cheese doodle and a Diet Coke. It fills 99 minutes but when you’re done you realize that there’s not a lot of movie in this movie.
And they spend way too much time answering the eternal question, “just where does a bear do his business in the woods?” The jokes are kid-friendly enough, they’re just few and far between and take their sweet time delivering.
Open Season stars Martin Lawrence in the Shrek character and Ashton Kutcher as the Donkey character. Open Season isn’t a direct clone of Shrek, but the buddy dynamics and the ‘journey of discovery’ plotline are plenty familiar.
Lawrence stars as Boog, a 900-pound grizzly bear who is the pet of Beth (Debra Messing) and the mountain town of Timberline. He’s the star of small animal show and so house-trained he uses a porcelain toilet. Then one day Elliot (Kutcher), a scrawny one-horned deer turns Boog’s life and Timberline upside down.
In the wake of the mess, Beth does the only thing that makes sense to her. She returns both misfits to the forest above town where they encounter beavers, squirrels, porcupines, deer and other denizens, who mock the pair’s foreign ways. Worse, hunting season is starting soon.
One of the movie’s shortcomings is Lawrence, who’s no Eddie Murphy or Mike Meyers for that matter. Open Season would have gotten instantly better with almost anyone besides Lawrence. Kutcher is surprisingly strong as the mischievous buddy. So too is Gary Sinise as Shaw, a hunter on the lunatic fringe.
Kudos to the producers for casting Canadian native American actor Gordon Tootoosis as Gordo, Timberline’s Indian law enforcement officer.
When I reviewed Over the Hedge I wrote that it was an animated movie that wanted to be good for you, like a high fiber cereal.
Open Season, another animated movie featuring furry forest creatures has no such ambitions. It’s a cheese doodle and a Diet Coke. It fills 99 minutes but when you’re done you realize that there’s not a lot of movie in this movie.
And they spend way too much time answering the eternal question, “just where does a bear do his business in the woods?” The jokes are kid-friendly enough, they’re just few and far between and take their sweet time delivering.
Open Season stars Martin Lawrence in the Shrek character and Ashton Kutcher as the Donkey character. Open Season isn’t a direct clone of Shrek, but the buddy dynamics and the ‘journey of discovery’ plotline are plenty familiar.
Lawrence stars as Boog, a 900-pound grizzly bear who is the pet of Beth (Debra Messing) and the mountain town of Timberline. He’s the star of small animal show and so house-trained he uses a porcelain toilet. Then one day Elliot (Kutcher), a scrawny one-horned deer turns Boog’s life and Timberline upside down.
In the wake of the mess, Beth does the only thing that makes sense to her. She returns both misfits to the forest above town where they encounter beavers, squirrels, porcupines, deer and other denizens, who mock the pair’s foreign ways. Worse, hunting season is starting soon.
One of the movie’s shortcomings is Lawrence, who’s no Eddie Murphy or Mike Meyers for that matter. Open Season would have gotten instantly better with almost anyone besides Lawrence. Kutcher is surprisingly strong as the mischievous buddy. So too is Gary Sinise as Shaw, a hunter on the lunatic fringe.
Kudos to the producers for casting Canadian native American actor Gordon Tootoosis as Gordo, Timberline’s Indian law enforcement officer.
Open Season is rated PG for "some rude humor, mild action and brief language."
DMR grades Open Season a C+.
The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Open Season was downgraded. Without the potty jokes I would have graded as a B-.
DMR grades Open Season a C+.
The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Open Season was downgraded. Without the potty jokes I would have graded as a B-.
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