Voices of: Will Arnett Katherine Heigl Maya Rudolph Jackie Chan Bobby Canavale Bobby Moynihan
In this version of the Nut Job stories, the animals have found that the nut store from the
first story is abandoned and filled to the brim with nuts and nut
products. They are gorging to
their hearts’ content, getting lazy and spoiled, according to Andie (Heigl);
she realizes that the store has a real downside, whereas her friend Surly
(Arnett) discounts her concerns and fails to get her point. She tries valiantly to get the animals
to forage for nuts, work hard, and save but they’re not really interested. Their indolence actually results in the
store burning to the ground after an explosion occurred when someone who was
supposed to be minding the boiler forgot about it. But it doesn’t really matter because what neither Surly nor
Andie realizes is that the corrupt mayor of Oakton City (Moynihan) has plans to
destroy Liberty Park and put in a dangerous (because he doesn’t want to bother
with safety issues) amusement park with rides and all the junk foods that Andie
abhors—cotton candy, peanuts, ice cream, popcorn, pizza.
Andie plays a kind of stereotypical female role in trying to
convince the male Surly to step up, get the animals to pull together, exercise
their instincts, and resist the humans.
His response is the male-like war cry. “You’re going to fight the humans?” says Andie incredulously. He does get the animals to rally
around, but they will go through many struggles, even trying to move to another
park in the city, in fighting the humans.
Along the way, they run into hordes of mice with a cheeky leader, Mr.
Don’t-call-me-cute! Feng (Chan),
which constitute an additional threat as “a weapon of mouse destruction.”
The film has good messages for children about
working hard, being responsible, cooperating with one another, doing what is
right rather than what is easy, and valuing the natural world and their own
instinctual nature. The mayor and
his spoiled, mean daughter are shown to be truly evil forces that must be
deterred somehow. In the end,
everybody seems to have learned something, or have suffered the consequences.
The animation and visual effects are very good,
but I noticed the picture was not bright, sharp, and colorful like most of
these productions are. It could
have been the projector or other equipment at fault, and the version I was
shown is not in 3D, which could also account for the problem; but this was a
surprise for an animation and detracted from the film’s quality.
A film with some good points, but not a
great improvement over the previous Nut Job.
