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Before not watching this movie, I must admit I was a bit skeptical. Over the Hedge had the sound of a badly pronounced French action hero movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. As I don't like action hero movies or Jean-Claude Van Damme, the hell if was going fork out $13.50 and two hours of my precious time to catch that flick! But someone mentioned that they thought it was animated. I got to thinking: Wow, a badly pronounced French action hero movie as a cartoon...nope, still didn't work for me.

But being open-minded, feverishly curious and extremely cheap, I forged on. I happened to eavesdrop on a couple of folks from Accounting talking about it at lunch the other day. The one fellow, a real critical bastard (bean-counter type) said he actually really liked it! He thought the story was great and his kids loved it too. Turns out, I really don't have much respect for him so that recommendation didn't hold any weight with me.

Undaunted, I was determined to get the buzz and find out just what this movie was about, more or less. I lurked everywhere — behind water coolers, in bathroom stalls — just to get a sense of what people were saying about it. Turns out hardly anyone else had even seen the movie, which is a pretty darn good indication that it sucks.

Not wanting to judge this movie too prematurely, I decided to visit the website. It looked to me like a bunch of squirrels and rodents running and screaming in some guy's front yard. Well, that looks real exciting...not! The animation was OK and all, but it really didn't catch my fancy. They didn't even provide a storyline synopsis. The nerve. They did, however, brag repeatedly about all of the stars they had doing voices for the movie: Bruce Willis, Gary Shandling, Wanda Sykes, Steve Carrell, Nick Nolte, Eugene Levy...OK, OK, I get the point. You have a ton of big-name stars which usually means about five minutes per star and a whole cast of griping egomaniacs. Oh, I'm really starting to like this flick now (aside: sarcastically).

According to the website, the DVD includes a four-minute short starring Hammy the Squirrel (Steve Carrell). That sounds pretty neat because Steve Carrell can be quite funny at times. But sadly, not enough to save this utter piece of crap (which I assume it, in fact, is).

In the final analysis, after not watching this movie, my opinion remains pretty much the same. I still don't like badly pronounced action hero movies or Jean-Claude Van Damme and my money is going to stay right where it is, in my pocket.