Furry Vengeance

Cast

Brendan Fraser as Dan Sanders
Ricky Garcia as Frank
Eugene Cordero as Cheese
Patrice O'Neal as Gus
Jim Norton as Hank
Brooke Shields as Tammy Sanders
Matt Prokop as Tyler Sanders
Billy Bush as Drill Sergeant
Ken Jeong as Neal Lyman

Synopsis

Dan Sanders is a loyal employee of Lyman Industries, so loyal in fact he uproots his entire family from Chicago, and moves them to the Oregon wilderness, in order to supervise the construction of a new 'eco friendly, green' site. Unfortunately unbeknownst to Dan, Neal Lyman is not as eco friendly as he makes out, and is planning to flatten the forest in order to double the size of the housing development, adding shopping malls with woodland themes!

Only the current inhabitants of the forest have other ideas, and they embark on an elaborate plan to make Dan see what a mistake he's making. Unfortunately for Dan, this plan is bound to make him a laughing stock at work.

My Thoughts

I've rated this a 3, but it almost got 2 star rating. For an adult it is very poor indeed, but my daughter and all the other kids in the cinema were laughing hysterically, so it must have hit their wavelengths.

The one good thing about this film was that it avoided the 'talking animals' pitfall that so many of these films fall into. It did however have amazing animals, with the ability to communicate that would make special intelligence jealous! This is where it fell down from an adult point of view, it was way too far fetched, but the kids enjoyed the 'nah-nah' type noises the animals would make once their plan had come together.

The film used real animals and stuffed ones too, I think they knew that the stuffed animals were never going to look realistic, so they went for the exact opposite and made them so totally unrealistic you couldn't help but laugh at them.

There were a few points in the film that most adults would find themselves chuckling away to. But unlike Shrek for example, there are no adult themes in the film, so it's not a case of there being laughs for kids and double entendre jokes for adults, all the laughs hit the lowest common denominator.

I don't think Brendan Fraiser did himself any favours with this film, he is a far better actor than the storyline of this film allows.

The storyline is a rehash of so many other nature v developer films or tv shows, and the outcome is pretty obvious from the beginning.

Still it was worth the entrance money to hear my daughter laughing away, so it wasn't all bad.