CinemaNow - Open Season

This is certainly open season for critics firing potshots at animated animals. To be sure, the animated animal population may be in need of some thinning out, but the critics are firing a veritable fusillade at Sony's Open Season. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post suggests that the film might "make an excellent case for euthanizing the entire talking-animals genre." Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star writes that Open Season offers virtually the same plot as every other such film that has been released this year. "I missed the passing of the international law requiring nine out of 10 computer-generated kids' cartoon movies to be about talking animals on an odyssey, but I can't wait for it to be challenged out of existence," he writes. Gene Seymour in Newsday says that the digital animation does look impressive. "In fact," he writes, "Open Season shimmers so much in strictly visual terms that its dearth of genuine wit or ingenuity is almost physically painful to acknowledge." Likewise, Laura Kern in the New York Times observes that despite its "eye-popping imagery" the makers of the movie "can't disguise that this is just another movie full of jive-talking computer-generated animals with little new to say." There are a few animated animal lovers out there, however. One of them is Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel, who writes, "It's not deep, and not totally original. But Open Season is whiplash quick with the gags and spot-on with the funny voices." And Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times describes the movie as "garrulously warm and wacky" and "an amusing if slight excursion into nature with a group of animals who turn the tables on their collective nemeses, the hunters."

Very enjoyable and quirky fun for all.