Operation: Nussknacker - Auf die Nüsse, fertig, los!

Aside from a few gags here and there, The Nut Job is an empty movie that serves mainly as children's entertainment. The plot centers around an independent squirrel who, after being banished form his park, looks to earn back the trust of the animals by organizing an heist, hence securing the food supply (nuts) for the winter. Usually I like humor in an animated movie, yet I still crave a good story and interesting characters. In this film we mainly see straight forward roles for everyone, and some characters work only as comic relief. I don't mean to complain too much about a movie like this, since it is directed at kids, but like I said, one can only take so much of a lack of substance in a feature film. In a nutshell (no pun intended), The Nut Job succeeds in its premise, as it allows kids to have their fun at the movies. For a more mature viewer, the content is well voiced, but in the long run the result is quite forgettable.

Rating: 6/10

Yes, as most of the professional (and a few of the amateur) reviews pointed out, the political satire in THE NUT JOB is extremely heavy handed if you go in looking for it, and the "cuddly/comfort level" one initially expects when seeing furry creatures this well animated is lower than what we have come to expect from the Disney films which are usually the only ones which approach this level of polish - but when one looks at the actual PLOT these film makers have chosen to tell, a kid-friendly riff on the kind of film noir caper films where different gangs are fighting over access to the same crime scene and ultimately (contrary to a couple earlier reviewers who clearly didn't want a Korean helmed film to succeed) arrived at exactly the "aww," and "we CAN fix any problems" moment any film like this must build toward.

No child over 10 will have any problems distinguishing between the various squirrel characters of varying hew, although an insistent naturalist might be pulling out their hair at the various species populating and co-operating in this "never-never-land" unidentified city park in a city living below a non-threatening dam which may or may not be destroyed by the end of the film (the illogic here - betraying the producers' lack of experience for all their technological finesse) is ultimately the film's greatest weakness - but will bother few of those the film is actually aimed at).

The flaws ultimately fade while the adventure and the over-all successes linger in the memory - which is one reason I'm glad I waited a day to review this film. Probably best of all for parents who actually want to INVOLVE themselves in their children's viewing, the number of sophisticated "teachable moments" in this film are remarkable. Most family groups today will probably not be screening the semi-classic animated version of Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, but its essential points are made much more approachably with possibly greater sophistication (and better animation) here - and the opportunities to see and understand facing complicated issues and even having to change sides and seek forgiveness for errors has seldom been better presented.

I suspect that this film - with initial notices focusing on the flaws (what COULD the releasing company have been thinking with the disco dancing Korean producer - who doesn't appear anywhere else in the film - joining the rest of the animated cast ALL through the final credit crawl testing the bias level of critics!? - It was APPARENTLY an attempted riff on a current pistachio...get it? NUT? commercial) will end its initial U.S. release rather deeply in the red, but when the DVD comes out, and in foreign release, this NUT JOB should do very nicely indeed. There's far more to like here than to "dis." If you watch TV *with* your kids rather than simply using it as a baby sitter, I think it's even highly recommended.

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7.8 of 10. This has a lot of the 50s-70s style cartoon animal characters along with their seeming invincibility to any sort of explosion or accident. It comes, however, with excellent modern drawing, natural 3D art and animation to add to a distinct story of friends & sharing.

At the base of this is a great, very simple to understand story for kids. Treasure your friends and share with them. It's more complex than that, involving theft both direct and indirect, and some devious political-like characters for adults to enjoy.

The humor in the film alternates from kiddy and tween to puns and some more amusing adult idiosyncrasies and allusions. The soundtrack is extremely limited but works in the few places it's used.

The animation was nice and very colorful, and the actors voicing there characters is well done, this movie was trying to be satire of heist films but from a squirrels point of view. It's not laugh out loud funny, but it is funny in spots. And the characters really are a joy to watch also. It's not quite Over The Hedge(2006), but all in all not terrible.

Now the problem I had is that I feel that the movie could not decide if it wanted to be for kids or adults, unlike the Toy Story films which it was for both. But I felt The Nut Job could not make up it's mind. Some jokes are hit and miss for the kids. The filmmakers should have improved a little better with that, not a terrible animated film, but a great one either.

Despite the trailer looking absolutely dreadful, being an animation buff and seeing that it had some good actors in the vocal cast I still saw it anyway. It wasn't a complete disaster and there are worse animated films around, but The Nut Job was lacking in a lot of ways and from my point of view the weakest of the handful of animations seen so far. Which have been actually a solid handful with How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Lego Movie being the best. The Nut Job does have some good things, the best thing being the animation which was great, very colourful and vibrant with a lot of admirable detail and the characters look cute(even if Buddy looks eerily looks like Remy from Ratatouille). The soundtrack is also bright and breezy, there were a few moments where I did chuckle and there are a few of the voice actors that acquitted themselves well. Maya Rudolph was a standout, she is very bubbly and really comes alive, Stephen Lang plays gruff really well and Liam Neeson while deserving far better is adequately menacing and shady. Jeff Dunham tries his best too, despite being saddled with some of the worst of the humour with that of the two groundhogs managing to be worst. Will Arnett however takes Surly's purposefully surly personality to extremes and is far too snarky and smug, despite his cute appearance Surly is a very unlikeable character. Katherine Heigl sounds to me too romantic-comedy-ish, not that she does it badly but it doesn't fit the character, too humdrum and cutesy. Brendan Fraser is a likable actor but he and his supposedly heroic character Grayson really grate, not like Fraser at all usually. The characters(forgetting the very uninspired names for a second) are too underdeveloped and shallow in personality to be likable(with Buddy and Maya being slight exceptions), a lot of them with character arcs that don't go anywhere. Despite Neeson's voice work Racoon is too underwritten to be believable as a villain and Surly is very difficult to root for. But it's the lazy writing that hurts The Nut Job, filled with conflicts that come across as hackneyed and things resolve too tediously at times. Despite the odd amusing moments, the jokes border on dumb rather than witty and are not funny, and the bathroom humour also borders on juvenile and distasteful. The story in terms of subplotting is busy but a lot of those subplots lack development and most like the romance are contrived, a case of too many ideas and themes not explored enough. It was already a flimsy premise and with the interminably stretched out pacing(the human mobsters scenes bring the film to a halt) and very derivative story-telling- you are constantly reminding yourself "where have I seen that before"- it feels even flimsier in execution. And to add further insult to injury, The Nut Job ends with a Gangnam Style sequence, which is one of the most annoying, repetitive and overplayed songs ever and definitely belongs on a list of "songs that you are already sick of after 5 hearings", in fact calling it a song is somewhat insulting. All in all, a mediocre animated film that has great animation but (very) lazy writing. 4/10 Bethany Cox