Opération Casse-noisette

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

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

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.