Nut Job - Operazione noccioline

A very positive movie, which, while borrowing heavily on Over the Hedge, is still a worthy standalone sight. Perhaps some characters are a bit naive or predictable... or outright annoying, but the whole composition is alright. The is movie is about crime, friendship and consequences... of both. It's beautifully animated, quality-voiced, has sufficient humor... and doesn't have revolting moments. Well, except for PSY, hehe.

Overall it doesn't have the qualities of an outstanding animated picture. It doesn't have unique plot, or music or some spark... But it does it's best to entertain, and that is already a step up from an average animation. Perhaps a critic less obsessed with animals or cuteness would judge it for less, but compared to many other movies, it at least doesn't have that much bad in it to go below the rating of 5. Six, perhaps seven out of ten - is the reward for entertainment without anything groundbreaking.

I saw this movie tonight with my two daughters. We were looking forward to seeing it as the trailers looked fairly entertaining. About 10 minutes in, my 4 year old say to me: "Daddy, why isn't this movie making us laugh?" Perfectly put! The movie makes a terrible attempt at humor (unless you think beavers farting is hilarious). There is no original humor in this movie. Every time a joke was made, my wife and I looked at each other and shook our head in utter disgust. The characters are lame and the plot is dumb. Save your money. This movie is not even worth a $1.29 redbox DVD rental, which I'm sure redbox will have in its inventory very soon. STAY AWAY! It was so terrible, we walked out in the middle when both of my daughters kept asking to go home. I wanted to ask the theater to provide a refund for being such a terrible movie, but felt too stupid to admit that I bought 4 tickets.

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

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

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