BEFORE: I've made my choices now about which remaining 2019 films to see before the Oscars - and honestly, it's not going to be many. And my choices might surprise some people - but really, I'm following the linking. I think I can get "The Irishman" and "The Joker" in before the deadline, and I think that's going to have to suffice.
But you may well ask, why "The Nut Job"? Why watch a silly (I'm assuming...) animated film for kids now? Well, part of the reason is that I've figured out that this gets me closer to "The Irishman" and "The Joker", but also if it wasn't this film today, then "Mortal Engines" would have been a dead end, I had no other connection that would lead away from that film. So there you go.
Stephen Lang carries over from "Mortal Engines" - voice-work only in both films, but that counts. Unless the work in "Mortal Engines" was also motion-capture, which I admit is possible. That's something that I'm not really sure how to count as an "appearance", if I'm being honest. The actor's image technically was recorded for a film, but then most likely drastically changed by CGI effects, so how do I quantify an actor's movements and expressions being represented in a film, without his original image being involved? It's a paradox - I'll stick to counting vocal appearances, thanks.
THE PLOT: An incorrigibly self-serving exiled squirrel finds himself helping his former park brethren survive by raiding a nut store that also happens to be a front for a human gang's bank robbery.
AFTER: OK, let's get the good news out of the way first - it was very clever to set the scenario of a squirrel trying to get nuts within the larger framework of a bank heist. Yep, it's another mash-up film tonight, it's a heist film AND an animated film for kids. They used to run commercials for Reese's Peanut Butter cups that would feature two people bumping into each other on a street corner, both eating snacks while walking, and they'd end up saying, "Hey, you got your peanut butter on my chocolate!" and "No, you got your chocolate in MY peanut butter!" before realizing that the two tastes go well together. (Ask yourself, though, have you ever seen someone walking down the street, eating from a jar of peanut butter? That's just not right, but we never questioned the ads during the 1970's. It was a strange time, after all, people walking down the street ingesting all kinds of strange substances, and peanut butter probably wouldn't be the weirdest one...)
The animal-based story works on one level, and it does fit quite neatly within the bank human bank heist story. The gang has chosen to operate out of a nut store right next to the bank, so they can tunnel from the basement of the store under the bank and come up in the vault, and then when they take out the bags of money, their plan is to replace them with sacks of peanuts. Now, I don't think anyone would easily mistake a bag of nuts for a bag of cash, but perhaps this was some kind of spiteful joke. Hey, most thieves wouldn't leave ANYTHING in return when they steal money, so maybe these guys are just a bit more polite than your average crooks. So strangely, I'm going to allow this one.
But while they're committing the robbery, Surly Squirrel just wants to get into their shop's basement and out again with a sack of nuts. Meanwhile, the other squirrels (Andie and Grayson) are tasked with finding food in the big city that will feed all the animals in the park, because winter is coming and in the opening sequence, the big tree that holds all the food for everyone burned down, thanks to Surly's attempt to steal a nut vendor's cart. (The nut vendor was really one of the bank robbers, pretending to sell nuts while he was really casing the bank. Apparently it's a small town without too many interesting characters in it, or any real nut vendors...) Andie and Surly end up having this loose "let's work together" relationship, because if they can get into the nut shop's basement, Surly can have his nuts and some can also be brought to the park, and everyone can survive the winter.
And for the most part, this works - squirrels are thieves, too, like you never see them PAY for anything, do you? They just take what they want and bury it somewhere, then they also have to steal Post-Its to plaster their dens so they'll remember where all the buried nuts are. (This information comes to me from another old commercial, I think it was one from Staples.) But there's a more important message being sent out to the kids here, since the squirrels who are working for the benefit of the park animals, at the behest of the leader raccoon, eventually learn that the raccoon is corrupt, and he's been manipulating the food levels in order to keep the park animal populace dependent on him, and therefore subservient. Kids can learn a valuable lesson here on government ethics, and how leaders can't be trusted and usually lie to the people, and provide government services only when they have to, and when it benefits them to do so. Generally speaking, of course.
But I think there are still major storytelling problems inherent in the execution here. There are too many squirrel characters, for one, and I had trouble telling Grayson, the foil character, from the lead squirrel, Surly. Yes, Surly is purple and Grayson is gray, but the colors aren't all that different, and they look almost identical except for the color. There are no purple squirrels, so why couldn't Surly be dark brown, or black? Then it would at least be easier to tell them apart - did purple test better with a focus group or something? Grayson is also a very problematic character, he over-emotes and has an inflated ego, and then he gets a head injury at some point, which causes him to act more erratically, be confused about everything and basically random things. I hated him - was he even all that necessary? He also kept aggressively hitting on Andie, and that's a terrible character in a kids' film, even back in 2014 before the #metoo movement.
Grayson also managed to SCREAM every time he appeared on screen, because he was always surprised by whatever he saw, again this was due to the head injury. But a lot of other characters also followed this same practice - so there was a lot of screaming all around, whenever any character entered suddenly, creating jump-scare after jump-scare. I can't help but feel that this (plus all the running around, falling down and random explosions) was all engineered to keep the attention of the ADHD kids out there, give them a little hit of endorphins every few minutes so they'd stay focused and satisfied. Great, now we're just pandering to these little monsters with short attention spans.
There's also a pug dog that guards the nut shop, a couple of groundhogs who want to tunnel into it (nicely mirroring the thugs tunneling into the bank) and a mole. (You can just feel the joke coming a mile away if the mole is working for both sides, right?) Honestly, it's a bit like all the Disney princess sidekicks were thrown together with some leftover rat characters from "Ratatouille" into their own movie. (Hmm, I could maybe pitch that to Disney, excuse me while I jot that down...)
The other downsides include the over-emphasis on the dog whistle, because that's just not how they work, and they never explained why that ONE criminal could hear it, and nobody else could. Was he secretly a DOG? Did he have a hearing aid? If it's important enough to be a crucial plot point at the end, it's worth taking 30 seconds to explain it. All the other animal characters wanted it too, the raccoon apparently just because it was shiny, and this seemed a little too convenient too. NITPICK POINTS all around, and just way too much time spent on one small object.
Another NITPICK POINT is for the raccoon working against his own plan, because it's been established at this point in the story that he controls the park animals through food, and that his cache of food has been destroyed - so logically, he should be in the market to replace that. It doesn't make sense for him to want his minions to collect food, only not very much - more food means more control, QED. Think of a government agency collecting taxes - they'd always be looking for new ways to collect, or people or things to tax. The IRS audits taxpayers, files notices, etc., all in the interest of collection, and would never be looking for ways to interfere with that process. Somehow the raccoon wants to control the populace, but not that much? He wants some animals to starve so he'll have fewer subjects? This just doesn't track.
And if I had trouble figuring out which characters were on which side and what their goals were, I can't imagine any kids following along with this either. It's like some writer didn't understand how villains work, or something. Some characters had clear motivations, while others didn't, and just flailed around randomly. I can expect a cartoon to change the laws of physics (within reason) but even animal characters still need to have a WHY for the things that do, and that has to make sense.
Also starring Will Arnett (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Brendan Fraser (last seen in "The Quiet American"), Katherine Heigl (last seen in "27 Dresses"), Liam Neeson (last heard in "Daddy's Home 2"), Maya Rudolph (last seen in "The Happytime Murders"), Jeff Dunham, Gabriel Iglesias (last heard in "Coco"), Sara Gadon (last seen in "Enemy"), James Rankin, Joe Pingue (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Scott Yaphe, Annick Obonsawin, Julie Lemieux, Robert Tinkler, James Kee, Scott McCord (last seen in "16 Blocks"), Katie Griffin.
RATING: 4 out of 10 mousetraps
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