FURRY VENGEANCE (Roger Kumble). 92 minutes. Opens Friday (April 30). For venues, trailers and times, see Movies. Rating: N
Movies like Furry Vengeance are an excellent argument for animation as a cinematic form. If Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert’s script had been produced as a feature-length cartoon, it might have been a pleasant entertainment.[rssbreak]
Hell, if they’d used the exact same pitch for a Simpsons movie – with Homer being put in charge of an exurban expansion and earning the enmity of the local woodland creatures – they might really have had something.
Instead, they went the live-action route, with Brendan Fraser playing the all-too-human punching bag who gets smashed, squished, stomped and (repeatedly) skunked by the organized forest fauna. And it’s just no fun to watch, what with the actors pulling wacky faces and the digitally enhanced animals winking and high-fiving each other.
“But it’s a kids’ movie!” someone will say. Well, yes, I guess it is. Certainly the bright colours and incessant, insistent musical score are designed to hold the attention of any toddler who might wander into the auditorium. But even kids can tell the difference between George Of The Jungle and Dudley Do-Right, to cite two of Fraser’s other family-oriented projects.
I don’t blame Fraser. He commits fully to the role and its humiliations. And he has one moment, late in the game, when he captures the exhausted, exasperated resignation of Daffy Duck. I just wish he – and I – hadn’t had to endure the experience of this awful movie to get there.
