O Que Será de Nozes?

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

The Nut Job looks fantastic. Try to ignore the trailer, and if possible, the inconsistent soundtrack, too. Pay attention to the subtle nod to the 50's, present in all the background details: The rooms, the cars, the human characters. It looks great. The attention to visual detail is spot on. So kudos to the people in charge of making this look the way it does.

The story itself has promise: A nut heist that runs concurrently with a bank heist, the squirrel storyline paralleling the human one. As you can imagine, there are cheap jokes and nut puns a plenty, but at least the younger children in the theatre will be entertained. Any flaws present in the Nut Job have nothing to do with the way it looks. And if anything, that's what saves it.

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.

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.

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.