Over The Hedge

The best of a poor mix available at the cinema this weekend (well, after I eliminated everything I'd already seen).

I was actually pleasantly surprised. It was genuinely funny at times and kept my attention. Not too many jokes for the adults, but I still guffawaed through it.

Some odd voice casting though. Bruce Willis as the racoon I could understand, but William Shatner as the possum? And Avril Lavagne as his daughter?!?

Basic plot is given away in the trailer. A bunch of animals wake up from hibernation to find half their forest has been developed into suberbia. As usual, there's a subplot I won't go into, but the scene with the dog and the gas tank is comedy genius. And the hyper-active squirrel is hillarious.

There's possibly a message about wasteful humans and their eating habits in there, but it's unlikely the kids will pick up on this.

Only spoilt slightly by hearing that Bruce Willis was a bit of a jerk on the Radio 1 show interviewing him about it this morning. Still, it was 3am, so maybe he was entitled.

OQs:

"CORK?!?"

"Muhahaha!- Did I say that out loud?"

The Untouchables

What is it with this film that makes me want to watch it every time it's on TV?

Kevin Costner is superb as Ness. Sean Connery plays it straight for once, and forgoes the hair-piece¹. Andy Garcia is the crack shot rookie cop. But De Niro just steals the show as Capone. The scene with the baseball bat still makes me shudder, because he wasn't really punishing his lackie, he was making a point about the power he had.

This film is stylish with a capital ST.

There's plenty of fantastic camera work onshow here. I'm still trying to work out how they did the shot of the burglar entering Connery's pad. It's got to be a steady cam, but how did it fit? Steady cams are fairly big things. It hasn't dated much at all. OK, there are the odd shots where you can tell it's rear projection, etc. But on the whole, it's still a superbly good looking film. If it was a woman, it's be....well, it's be well out of my league so let's not go there....

It's hard to realise this comes from the same director (Brian De Palma) who gave us Scarface (hurrah), Carrie (woohoo) and Mission to Mars (er....).

Apparently there's a sequel in the offing.

Score: B+

OQ: There are too many: I can't do the quote here, but it's Andy Garcia swearing at Malone when they first meet, and Connery replies "Oh, I like him" The other is just before this, with the stuttering officer:

"To prto..to pro...to protect and s-serve."
"Alright, on you go. There goes the next chief of police."

"He's in the car..."

"1634 Racine. You know I used to have a friend who lived there..."

¹There's a rumour that his wig for The Hunt for Red October cost $20,000.^2
2No really, I'm not making that up.