Your thoughts and feelings on Over the Hedges messages

My single favorite of the messages is the revelatory theme on consumerism that runs throughout. You can see it expressed in every way--from the SUV deal you mentioned, to the way Gladys runs the Home Owners' Association, to the inference and honesty in how junk food is portrayed. RJ's speech on food is like a major indictment of American society on its own. (Two little touches within that always get chuckles from me: the suggestion that each meal is begun by worshipping the food, and how one of the couch potatoes pretty much trashes his house getting to the door for the pizza man.)

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To be honest, I saw the "family is important" moral coming from miles away. Cartoons and animation (especially the Pixar variety, but also in many TV series) continually have messages and morals shunted into them. It can get very irritating as you can predict how the plot will turn out based on the moral they are teaching, and often characters act out of character or very unrealistic plot twists can be made just so the moral is taught by the end.

However, Over the Hedge managed it quite well, they may have said "family" a few too many times, but generally they kept it on the low down which helped with giving the message. You more "felt" what they were saying then "heard" it, or at the very least it was closer in that direction.

As for the consumerism aspect, yes, I like how there was some very nice pieces of satire in it (keep in mind, it was based on a newspaper comic strip that thrived off of that sort of satire). RJs speech about humans and food were definitely a high point, a different (yet extremely reasonable) perspective on a common topic giving us new insight about it. Good satire in a nutshell.

Much of this movie is a satirical riff on modern living standards (I think that's the right word?) but not in a heavy-handed way, which is fortunate because otherwise it could have sidelined the plot.

Supermodels...spoiled stupid little stick figures mit poofy lips who sink only about zemselves.

The family messages were okay, but the environmental messages felt very heavy-handed to me. When I left the theatre, I felt a little dizzy from all the sledge-hammered messages! For the tract housing suburbia, what were kids supposed to get from that? Sure, the portrayal is realistic, but if kids actually live in that type of housing, are they supposed to feel guilty for living there and resent their parents?


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THIS is from Congo Jack!

I LOVED IT....Can't get furrier than this!!

I thought the movie itself was just decent, not great but still pretty good... That said, I really did enjoy the things you pointed out OP. I also am not a fan of the rampant consumerism and pressure to conform in this country so I got a kick out of all the little jabs they put into the movie. Suburban life and brand worship is just not my cup of tea. I can be happy in dense city or in open country (which is actually where I am now), but something about the sameness (and the keep-up-with-the-Jones' factor) of suburbs irks me.

I guess I can accept dense cities and tiny apartments because while they rip up an area and replace it with concrete they at least have the decency to make more efficient use of the space, and the country because while homes are spaced in an extremely inefficient manner there is more of a tendency to coexist with what is already there in terms of plants and wildlife rather than focus all of our energy on conquering and subduing it. Like where I live now, I don't know anyone within several miles of me that has what would be an acceptable lawn in a suburb, what some would call weeds I would call native vegetation (grass is a weed, it's just one that we as a society have deemed favorable), lots of trees too. We get all sorts of birds, squirrels, insects etc. that come out and they are all able to find what they need right around the yard and in the summer when the "weeds" bloom into little flowers/dandelions etc. we get lots of bees (these are not the evil creatures they are made out to be, granted I'm talking about regular honeybees not killer bees. I've walked around the yard among hundreds of them and have never once been stung in 8 years even when I accidentally bump into one) and butterflies. There are also plenty of deer, armadillos, raccoons, opossums etc. but don't often see them because they tend to hide during the day.

Suburbs on the other hand are just a blight as far as I'm concerned. Large tracts of identical jumbo houses with artificial manicured lawns (ripping up the native plant life and importing something that wasn't there to begin with is not good for the ecosystem and there's a reason you have to work so hard to keep it alive, the area is rejecting it and trying to kill it off). I'm not trying to start a fight with anyone who lives in a suburb, not saying anyone is a bad person for that, not at all, just saying that I think suburbs themselves are bad. They bring out the worst in a lot of people over time (granted, they would certainly drive me crazy after a few years) and they are bad for the environment because everything is ripped out and manicured into uniform carpet. My opinion though.

I actually remember hearing that bees are becoming more and more scarce in this country and while I don't have any facts to back it up (granted I haven't bothered looking) I doubt that all the suburban landscaping going on these days is helping the problem, when you have yards like that the bees have nothing to survive on. Without bees our crops will die out and we'll have no food, not really worth it for a carpet of perfect grass. Personally I'd rather not go through all the work of killing off whatever naturally grows in my lawn and replacing it with something that clearly isn't supposed to occupy 100% of the yard. It's not only time and money intensive for me but it severely hurts the surrounding ecosystem as far as insects,animals, and even other plants go. Sure there is plain old grass in my yard but it's mixed naturally with whatever else decides to grow there.

Anyway, it seems I REALLY went off and ranted here (especially considering this is a board for an animated movie hehe), this is just a peeve of mine. The "suburban ideal" just seems to go against *everything* we're taught as children about respecting nature and also not having a herd mentality.