Firing Back at “Open Season”

 I absolutely adore animated movies. My mother bought nearly every Disney movie on videocassette as they were released, so as a kid I had a pretty complete collection. They were the only videos we had had in the house, and I watched them over and over again. Ever since Snow White, Disney has made movies with gorgeous animation and entertaining stories, so I was conditioned as a kid to associate animated movies with a good time. It helped that I was just the right age to really experience that Alan Menken/Howard Ashman Golden Age. The Little Mermaid premiered the month I turned three (I can remember seeing in the theatre, too, making it the earliest memory I can associate with an approximate date), and was followed by one of my all-time favorite movies of any type, Beauty and the Beast. There was a stretch of four awesome movies-Mermaid, Beauty, Aladdin, and The Lion King. When Howard Ashman died, though, the touches he had brought to the stories faded away. Pocahantas had a great signature song in “Colors of the Wind,” but didn’t have much for a child to latch on to other than the animal sidekicks, and the historical inaccuracies make it hard to appreciate as an adult.

Still, Disney kept its supreme reign over animation and crushed all challengers, like Dreamworks’ Prince of Egypt. Early in the computer animation game, Disney’s ties with Pixar made Disney look like the innovator because they had the name recognition. But as Pixar kept making awesome movies, and Disney turned out stinker after stinker, including Brother Bear and the unwatchable Home on the Range (Lilo and Stitch and The Emperor’s New Groove are fantastic, however; which gives me hope for Disney yet), the public’s recognition of Pixar as a separate entity grew.

Pixar movies are great because the writers there have found the well of stories that Disney seems to have forgotten. These would be great movies in any medium, although the vibrance and capabilities of 3D animation certainly make them even better. But did the other studios, witnessing the floundering of Disney and the rise of Pixar make the connection about story-telling? No, of course not, this is Hollywood. Instead, it’s as if they figured it was the technology that was drawing audiences. To some extent that’s true, but it isn’t true enough to excuse the sorry state animation finds itself in today.

Non-Pixar 3D animated movies generally suck on either one or both counts: the visuals and the stories. I’ll allow for some exceptions. Shrek had a great, irreverent story, and good enough animation (though it certainly wasn’t Pixar-level). The second one was redeemed only by Antonio Banderas as Puss-in-Boots and Jennifer Saunders as the Fairy Godmother. Otherwise, it relied on current pop-culture references to an even greater extent than the first one, and I can’t see it aging well. I liked Hoodwinked well enough; the animation was cheap, cheap, cheap, but the script was tight. I’m sure there are others, I haven’t seen every recent animated movie (some, like Barnyard, I refuse to see on general principle). I guess Aardman, though not CGI, could be classified as 3D, and I love Wallace and Grommit and Chicken Run. But stuff like Shark Tale? Augh.

 I was home for college on fall break this weekend, and my family went to see a movie. My mother wanted to see Open Season, my dad wanted to see The Guardian, my brother is still waiting to see Snakes on a Plane, and we all have to consider that my sister is nine years old. So Open Season it was (I guess this is part of the reason animated movies are pretty much guaranteed to find an audience, in a sea of horror sequels and teen comedies, they are easily recognizable as “family friendly.”) It was the longest 70 minutes of my life. Pokemon 2 still remains the stupidest movie I ever saw in a theatre, but Open Season gives it a run for its money. What laughs there were were pretty forced, and I found myself getting madder and madder as the movie dragged on. Full disclosure time: I was raised hunting, fishing, and camping, and this movie just wasn’t good enough to overcome my background knowledge and install in me that all important suspension of disbelief. Unlike Bambi, which wins me over with its beauty, sense of nostalgia, and message of “life goes on,” Open Season just pissed me off. I started cataloguing flaws about five minutes in.

1) Let’s start with Beth, a.k.a the stupidest employee ever in the history of the parks system. Sometime in the past, Beth rescued an orphaned bear cub. Instead of rehabilitating it with the intention of releasing it; Beth turned Boog, our hero, into a unicycle riding sideshow attraction that lives in her garage, eats out of a dog dish, uses a toilet, and snuggles down with a teddy bear every night.

2) The second big issue I had was with the portrayal of the hunters, particularly the main baddie, Shaw. Now, I did like Gary Sinise’s vocal performance as Shaw. But my god there has never been an uglier animated character, and animated villains usually tend towards ugly. He’s a hunch-shouldered, beer-bellied, rotted-teeth, gun-clutching, pickup-driving caveman. He’s also a stereotypical asshole hunter: he’ll shoot anything that moves with no regard for the laws and regulations that govern hunting. Sure, there are hunters like that, but they’re surely outnumbered by the law-abiding citizens.

3) Somebody please tell me: on the North American plains, why would the ducks be French and the squirrels be Scottish?

4) Elliott (Ashton Kutcher’s hyperactive mule deer) was kicked out of his herd. Looks to me he’s better off without it: a herd of twenty mature bucks and a single doe cannot be a fun place during the rut. How does this herd expect to reproduce itself? Giselle, the doe, can only be pregnant by one buck at a time, leading to one, maybe two new fawns to replace the deer that die due to hunting, predators, and winter scarcity. Now, twenty does, all pregnant by the dominant buck, voiced by Patrick Warburton? That means at least 20 new fawns.

Yes, it’s a kid’s movie. It probably wasn’t intended to put forth any propaganda; it’s there to make money. But kids are smart, and just like with Barnyard’s bulls with udders, they can figure out when something is stupid (my brother turned to me during the movie and whispered “why would anyone mount a skunk’s butt on their wall?”). And is there really that much humor value in repeated squirrel nut jokes and the situation of a bear that really can’t shit in the woods?

Luckily, The Little Mermaid was released on DVD last week and I'll be discussing it in a later post.