Open Season
It's the least imaginative animation idea in cinema: cartoon animals endangered by cartoon hunters. Still, as cartoon rip-offs go, ``Open Season" can be surprisingly entertaining, in a made-for-6-year-olds kind of way.
Assembled by filmmakers Roger Allers (co-director of ``The Lion King"), Jill Culton, and Anthony Stacchi, this cuddly computer-generated first feature from
Even though its premise is embarrassingly tired -- a domesticated grizzly bear named Boog (Martin Lawrence) has to leave his forest-ranger surrogate mom (Debra Messing) and outsmart hunters while he makes furry friends and learns to survive in the wild -- the screenplay by Nat ``Doctor Dolittle" Mauldin and ``Chicken Little"/``Brother Bear" scribes Steve Bencich and Ron J. Friedman (fleshing out an idea by comic-strip creator Steve Moore and producer John Carls) has just enough spunk and giggles to occasionally win you over.
Generic computer animation techniques are rescued by a level of detail that extends right down to the textured fur on Boog's back and the in-your-face pull of a rushing mountain stream. And stock characters, from a redneck, trigger-happy villain (Gary Sinise) to a cacophony of talking animals with one-liners on their mind, at least manage to be less annoying than in some films (cough, ``Madagascar").
Let's be clear : Personality-free Boog is no Yogi Bear, and even at its best, this mostly flavorless cartoon is only reaching for a bar that was set at toddler playground height. Boog's journey begins after a series of misunderstandings (including a minimart rampage that admirably declines endless opportunities for product placement), when he's banished from his coddled showbiz life in a remote small town and dropped into the high mountain forest a few days before the start of hunting season.
As Boog tries to make his way back ``home," he discovers his real place in the world with the help of his deer friend Elliot (Kutcher) and various other woodland creatures including shell-shocked ducks, sassy skunks, heckling beavers, and an army of fiery squirrels led by Billy Connolly.
It all leads up to a classic wilderness battle (flaming-marshmallow arrows, skunks used as stink bombs . . . you get the picture) in which predators become prey and vice versa. Even the littlest viewers should know exactly where this is going, every step of the way. That won't keep anyone from laughing, though.
Janice Page can be reached at jpage@globe.com.
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