The Nut Job Review
RYAN: The Nut Job is the first new animated movie of the year and I like a family film, but coming off the heels of 2013, a stellar year for animated features with Frozen, The Croods, Monsters University, Despicable Me 2, Cloudy 2, etc… this movie was all over the place. This one is substandard in comparison; should have been direct to DVD.
CHUCK: Yeah. It definitely set the bar low for 2014 animated films. Since there’s such a drought for family films currently in theaters, it will probably make some money at the box office.
RYAN: It’s fine to go and park young kids in this – it certainly skews juvenile. But it won’t appeal to adults and the humor is so lowest common denominator: a lot of farting and pandering jokes that took no creativity whatsoever. No cleverness.
CHUCK: And it didn’t seem to work. The audience we screened this with was half-filled with kids and they weren’t laughing either.
RYAN: It’s a major missed opportunity because instead of being a musical or fairytale, like Frozen, this is an action tale, a “bank heist” flick with squirrels and nuts. It could have had a lot of suspense and excitement. But it was boring.
CHUCK: It was and a lot of it comes down to the experience the studio has with movies.
RYAN: Well it’s just not a good script.
CHUCK: Bad script. The voice talent wasn’t the enticing.
RYAN: It’s weird. I like some of these actors but aside from Laim Neeson and Katherine Heigl, I couldn’t even recognize who was Brendan Fraser.
CHUCK: Will Arnett and Maya Rudolph were in it. She was the only one I liked. I will say it was visually there.
RYAN: The animation was okay but the 3D was not that good which is really weird since animation lends itself so easily to be manipulated into 3D. It’s pure CGI. This movie didn’t do it.
CHUCK: It borrowed so much, design-wise from other movies.
RYAN: Like Ratatouille?
CHUCK: Yeah some looked like that and the Angry Bird was a rip off the short For the Birds.
RYAN: It lacked originality.
CHUCK: Yeah and it was set in the 50s which didn’t really make much sense but it looked like The Incredibles.
RYAN: This is a disappointment because the best animated films will entertain all ages and this one certainly does not.
CHUCK: And I’m a huge fan of animation.
RYAN: It’s not even that great for kids. Watch Frozen again instead.
Nathan January 18, 2014
After seeing previews I was afraid of exactly what both have you have said. Thank you for for saving people 2 hours of our lives.