The Nut Job: A Creative and Comedic Lackluster

When I walked up to the box office all by myself and requested my one ticket for Peter Lepeniots’ The Nut Job, I was met with a lot of skepticism by the attendant. In fact, the gentleman behind the concession stand  as well thought he might have misheard what movie I said I was seeing while he was preparing my large popcorn, Peanut M&M’s, pretzel, 2 hot dogs, DIbbs Crunch, large soda, and nachos.

But what I want to know is what is the big deal with a 20ish year old-OKAY, a little closer to 30ish- year old man going to see an animated comedy? When I think of kid’s movie, my mind turns to Cinderella, The Lion King, Mulan, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and I wonder: What age group of soulless weirdos doesn’t like these types of movies?

So ignoring the confused and apprehensive looks of the theater staff, I found my way to a cozy seat right amongst all of the families, to get a more accurate read on how they enjoyed the film, of course, pulled my hoody down tight around my face, because boy are these theaters too cold now a days, put on my large aviator shades, seriously and the screens are way too bright, pulled out my personal bottle of Lubriderm, you know my skin gets very dry in this winter climate, set my tissues to the side just  in case my allergies flared up, and did my best to not notice concerned parents glancing over at me while they pulled their children close, so I could enjoy what was assuredly going to be a great show.

But where The Lion King made me cry and swear bloody vengeance on that bastard Scar, where Cinderella taught me that pretty people are good and ugly people are bad, and The Little Mermaid inspired thoughts deep in my loins that no 6 year old should have biologically been able to experience, The Nut Job gave me terrible fart jokes.

Granted, animated movies are not made to be awe inspiring cinematic game changers that force us to reconsider the way we view the world. They are formulaic, and because of that they may be too predictable for movie goers my age to consider masterpieces. However, they are supposed to be about beautifully drawn, or designed, adorable characters doing heartwarming and surprisingly clever and funny things. That’s what makes them magic. Simple minded? Yes, but magic none the less.

And The Nut Job has essentially none of that.

I’ll give Lepenoits and Lorne Cameron (Screenplay) this: they craft a marvelously weird plot. The film follows what I think is supposed to be an invincible and adorable, yet way too trusting squirrel girl (squirlette?) named Andie (Cathrine Heigl), her invincible buffoon side kick named Grayson (Brendan Frasier), and Surly (Will Arnett), an invincible wild card antihero squirrel who plays by his own rules, who are all trying to save their city park community of assorted park wildlife lead by its wolf-in-raccoon-clothing raccoon dictator. What ensues is a wonderfully complex plot of animal-backstabbers-backstabbing-backstabbers-for-nuts heist movie while a human-backstabber- backstabbing-backstabbers-for-gold heist movie takes place, with a coming of age, paranoia, and political corruption themes subtext.

But much like the heisters within the movie, the film falls completely flat on its face, not in their grandiose idea itself, but in the careless execution of it.

The animation is totally uninspiring; its characters devoid of enough defining characteristics to even tell who is who if they aren’t speaking sometimes. In real life I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between one squirrel and another out of squirrel lineup even if it walked up to me in pure daylight and robbed my picnic lunch at gun point, but I should be able to know who’s who in an animated kid’s movie.

The lack of effort also seeps over into our storytellers’ panache for resolving the conflicts that arise within their plot as well. Apparently, despite a park wide paranoia of starving to death, all of our rodents are immortal. My favorite scene in particular is where a rat somehow not only recognizes what a stick of dynamite is, but also recognizes that its lit, brings it over to one of our heroes, whose grand Idea is to throw it to the other side of a I don’t know, 10 ft. room, only to have it retrieved by a dog. What’s he going to do? Surely he must think quickly or everyone will die!

Instead, he doesn’t think of anything. He takes the dynamite straight to the face. The Squirrel is so dang hard, he doesn’t even bring it up in the next shot. The Black Knight at the Bridge in Monty Python’s Holy Grail could learn a thing or two from this rodent. A flesh wound? You going to cry about it all day, wussy?

This lack of creative energy permeates through all aspects of the movie, including what should be its most important element as a kid’s movie: its comedy.

I myself am not a fan of slapstick comedy, but a movie about squirrels should be ripe with it. And while there is plenty of slapstick, it’s all rotten. There’s unimaginative, and benign dancing to crappy covers of random chart topping techno-y sounding songs, several minute long montages of action that just sort of end without having any effect on the plot, and several different farting episodes that seemingly come out of nowhere.  It’s completely devoid of cleverness or even thought, and the children in the theater also picked up on this. They were as silent as I was. Comedy is a moving part mechanism, it’s at its best when those moving parts are clever in of themselves but the real pay-off is how they all tie in and build up to a punch line. Literally every sequence in The Nut Job putters out just before the punch line, and it leaves everyone in the audience, no matter the age, wondering: “Is that it?”

If you’re a grown up who’s a little bored this weekend and thinking maybe you’ll take a significant other to relive the Disney magic of your childhood with this new animated film, then I would suggest you save your money for a Netflix account where there are several good selections. If you’re a parent who’s looking to spend some quality time with their kids, then take them to the park; its beautiful outside. But! If you’re a parent who is looking for a place to drop them off while get some much needed “you time”, then you’d be NUTS not to take them to this NUTTY animated film.