Release date:  May 19, 2005
Rating:  PG (for some rude humor and comic action)
Genre:  Cartoon, Family
Run Time:  90 min.
Directors:  Tim Johnson, Karey Kirtpatrick
Actors (Voices):  Bruce Willis, Gary Shandling, Steve Carrell, Thomas Hayden Church, Nick Nolte, William Shatner, Wanda Sykes, Avril Lavigne, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Allison Janney, Omid Dajlili

As the field of computer-animated family films widens, and more studios jump into the fray to separate parents from their money, no longer is every CGI movie worth your time.  Kids are less discriminating when it comes to plot and characters, and their poor parents must often suffer through some of the most asinine entertainment. But once in a while a good “family movie” arrives on the scene, usually from Pixar Studios, that provides good clean family entertainment for kids without torturing the adults who plunked down hard-earned cash to make the outing possible. Even though measured against Pixar soon-to-be classics like "The Incredibles" and "Finding Nemo", "Over the Hedge" will come up wanting, its fun characters make for a likable film.

Based loosely on the comic strip of the same name, "Over the Hedge" tells the story of a small band of hibernating animals that awake from a long winter’s nap to discover an enormous hedge running through their forest. On the other side of this hedge lies the latest section of newly built suburbia in all its gleaming newness. R.J. (Bruce Willis), a worldly-wise raccoon with his own agenda, happens upon the stunned critters and begins offering them ‘advice’ about their new situation. They no longer need to worry about spending their summer gathering nuts and berries for the long winter. Their new human neighbors will now provide them everything they need in the shiny metal cans that sit outside their houses.

At first the group decides they don’t need what the humans have, preferring instead their standard forest fare. But after some persistence from R.J., they taste, in the form of a nacho cheese chip, what suburbia has to offer. Who would have thought Doritos taste better than wild berries and tree bark? Soon they decide they can’t live without human food and allow R.J. to lead them into the uncharted backyards to learn a new way of survival, much to the chagrin of the group’s de facto leader, a turtle named Vern (Gary Shandling). Your typical slapstick “animals and people don’t mix” mayhem ensues. Of course the locals, in the form of homeowners association president Gladys (Allison Janney) and the “Verminator” (Thomas Hayden Church), don’t take kindly to animal intruders and plot their demise.