Review of The Nut Job (2014) by Drew H — 08 Jul 2017

I had a feeling I knew what I was going to get when I finally sat down and watched The Nut Job. And I was mostly spot-on.

What I did expect was; too many 'nut' puns, cringe-y jokes, and an incredibly simplistic story. And I got...most of those things.

I received not only jokes that were hard to sit through, I also got Shrek-type bathroom jokes that were hard to sit through! Though, not all of the gags were hard to swallow necessarily because of the joke, but because of the animation. While The Nut Job offers animation that's rather impressively nice-looking (reminiscent of Secret Life of Pets and Monster's Inc,) it falls flat in actually acting like a cartoon.

Many of this film's problems come from its inability to show the cartoonish impact of someone in pain and is rather slow. Everything in this film moves slowly and realistic, thus not giving the audience the impact of a character smashing into the ground, or hitting a wall. Instead, it's painfully realistic, adding bone cracking sound effects, making these collisions uncomfortable to listen to. Another problem is the inconsistencies of the animation, such as Mole's eyes. He is portrayed with open eyes that look around implying he can see, but then all of the sudden is blind when a joke needs to be made about how he can't see. The slower animation works when an emotional scene needs to play, but for the rest of the film makes moments seem less funny than they should be. Except the end-credits. The Gangnam Style music video is completely unbearable.

The story consist of many cookie-cutter characters that have a problem with being monotone. It feels like most of the time nobody is reacting the way they should be or reacting enough; whether it's not being happy enough, sad enough, or afraid enough, it seems most lines are delivered the same way. Which is a problem when they're trying to show character-growth, though there isn't much as most characters are nonredeemably mean. Though it gets old quickly, I applaud Brendan Fraser as Grayson and Will Arnett as Surly, for being the only actors to seem to be having fun with their rolls, as well as Liam Neeson as the villain. The main problem with the core story however, is the forced drama little-ways into the second half. There's little to no buildup for any of it [the drama] and feels rushed. There is however an actually interesting side-story in the film, having to do with the human bank-robbers.

In conclusion; The Nut Job isn't nearly as bad as I was expecting, with most problems coming from the animation being slow and many annoying jokes. Hopefully the characters can ACTUALLY be fleshed out in the upcoming sequel. Though overall, I could not recommend this film to anyone over the age of 8-10. I give The Nut Job: 2 acorns out of 5.