Opération Casse-noisette

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

Surly, an adjective and a name apparently, embarks on an adventure to obtain food for the approaching winter. He runs across some wacky characters and antics ensue. The Good: Art- The time spent on the animal and human designs was readily apparent throughout the film. I could pick out individual hairs in the animals' coats. I also liked that the artists paid attention to the animals' mouths. They were not just mere flaps of skin covering teeth, but it looked like the mouth region actually had some depth, that the lips were also 3D along with the rest of the animal. The humans had a distinct look and style about them that made me think of 2D cartoons. Big and imposing, shady and dangerous, cute and cuddly, the artwork certainly helped draw a person in. Ambition- The Nut Job tried to draw on several genres of film. It attempts to reshape these stories and form into a family friendly movie. I could spot a crime drama, a voyage of self discovery, a tale of redemption and rejoining society, just to name a few. The film also provided some rudimentary information about the animal species through dialogue, so it did have some educational moments. Whether or not the film succeeded in its ambitions will be covered in the not-so-good section. The Not-So-Good: Pacing- What a colossal mess. The Nut Job is a short 86 minutes and the film tried to show at least three different story arcs. The audience is not shown how the characters will respond to any event because the next event is following hot on the heels of its predecessor. Because of this, any connection or concern for the characters is lost in the fray of action and fart jokes...yes, I'll get there too. Characters- Unfortunately the pacing of the film allows the survival of only the most basic character types. Might as well forget about character development too. And learning. And change for the better. Comedy- I had hoped that the family film genre had grown past this, I really did. Situational and character-based comedy has made significant headway into the family films. Granted it may be a little silly to laugh at Mr. Potato-Head's parts stuck in a flour tortilla, but I found it to be incredibly funny. Or how about when a mermaid becomes a human and, as a result of misguiding information told to her in a previous scene, she puts a fork and a pipe to hilarious use at the dinner table. Fart jokes. Maybe with the compressed story arcs, the only form of comic relief could come from this. The Nut Job tried to meld several different genres and in so doing, did not execute any of them well. You've seen better representatives of the genres attempted here and I'd suggest seeing them instead. 4/10

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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I was worried when I noticed that the bird on the shoulder of the animal leader is a Northern Cardinal, visually and internally styled to resemble the Cardinal from the game Angry Birds. My worries were confirmed when I heard the hit song Gangnam Style play almost out of nowhere, as the movie's main characters suddenly started to dance to the said tune. Technically, the story did give characters a reason to do the said short dance when they did it, though in a palpably heavy-handed way. Also technically, all rats animated using modern computer graphics are going to show similarities, but the rat character by the name of Buddy sure does look a lot like the main character of the animated movie Ratatouille. For that matter, all the animal characters resemble the various animals of Dreamworks and Disney films from recent times. This, ladies and gentlemen, sure does feel like a cash-in. Nut Job is a joint venture between South Korean, US and Canadian production companies that shows symptoms of trying hard to capitalise on the western animation market and the pop culture.

This is all particularly unfortunate when you consider that actual work was put into this production. Although the movie certainly has other problems, to be discussed shortly, the film does have a plot, it has a number of highly acclaimed actors that do a relatively good job at portraying their characters (however poorly those characters may have been written), and the animation is not terrible, even if rather bland. There are a few funny moments to experience, even though some jokes fall flat. There are certainly worse things to watch out there, but ultimately this Nut Job is botched (Pa-dum tss?).

In addition to its irritating exploitative nature, Nut Job suffers from poor writing. The general outlines of the story are simple and clear, but the individual scenes become less and less coherent as time goes by, less and less natural. There are many lines of dialogue that seem like were meant to be funny, or at least there is no other discernible purpose for them, like comments on smelly farts, but they aren't in fact funny.

This is a movie that is mildly entertaining and would probably go over well with young kids alive in the year in which the movie was produced, the year in which the musician PSY was still relevant, but it is unfortunate that a movie with so many good actors and such a budget is so average. The cash-in was successful, however. The movie more than made back its investment. I will not however be watching Nut Job 2. I'd have to be nutty to do that....Eh? Eh? Shut this down.

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.