Furry Vengeance

I can imagine the premise for Furry Vengeance making a cute 7-minute cartoon, but as a 90 minute feature, it stretches to almost the breaking point. The movie features a lot of woodland animals like raccoons, bears, possums, etc. fighting to save their forest home from a greedy housing development company that pretends to be about being "green" and protecting the environment, but really is out to destroy it. The animals' main target is Dan Sanders, your standard issue family film dad who puts business before his family, and learns what's really important by the end.

Dan's not a bad guy, really. He's played by Brendan Fraser, after all - an actor who sometimes does serious work, but usually specializes in playing goofy nice guys who mean well, but have hard luck. The boss at the development company (Ken Jeong) has put him in charge of the housing project, which occupies all his attention, meaning he doesn't have time for his wife (Brooke Shields) or teenage son (Matt Prokop). Things get even harder for Dan when the animals decide to retaliate against his plans to level their forest home for a new modern suburb. They actually start plotting against the guy. The ringleader of the animals is a raccoon, who goes out of his way to make sure Dan can't work. He orders a crow to peck constantly at the poor guy's window all night so he can't sleep. He arranges a small army of skunks to hide out in Dan's car and spray him. He even somehow manages to hot-wire Dan's vehicle and take it for a joyride with some of his woodland friends.

These are some smart creatures. They don't talk, so they communicate through screeches and chirps, and sometimes cartoon-style thought balloons that show us what they're planning. I was amazed at their ingenuity, such as the film's opening scene, where we see they have rigged a complex Rube Goldberg-style contraption that sends a giant boulder smashing down upon the intended target who threatens their way of life. It's sort of amusing the first time to see the clever little animals, but it loses its novelty the 60th time we see it. That's because the screenplay by Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert (Mr. Woodcock) is built of nothing but non-stop slapstick gags, and opportunities for Fraser's character to humiliate himself or get beat up. This is a tiresome movie that uses up all of its material by the 30 minute mark, but keeps on going anyway, hoping we won't notice.

Fraser at least comes across as a good sport, and seems willing to go to great lengths to make the kids in the audience laugh, even wearing womens' clothing in more than one scene. In one particularly unflattering sequence, he has to spend a great deal of time in his wife's pink jogging suit, which has the words "yum yum" printed across the rear end. It doesn't even fit right, causing his gut to hang out. All this, and he takes multiple pratfalls, gets sprayed by skunk juice more than any man ever should, takes a tumble down a cliff in an outhouse, and gets various things dropped on him from above. At least he seems to be trying, which is more than I can say for the rest of the cast, who are given nothing to do. Shields and Prokop as the wife and son get some underdeveloped subplots concerning a forest festival and a love interest for the kid, but neither plot goes anywhere.

Look, I know that Furry Vengeance is not meant for me. It's meant for kids. Really little kids. They won't care about the often shoddy and unconvincing special effects work used to bring the animals to life during the more complex scenes. They won't even care that the script doesn't have a single thought in its empty head. Any kid old enough to know better, though, would be better off saving their money for Iron Man 2 next weekend, or seeing How to Train Your Dragon again. And if you're an adult with no kids, and you're thinking of seeing this, you are beyond any help I can give.

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