‘Over the Hedge’ better suited for kids

While the animation in “Over the Hedge” is 3-D, the story is one-dimensional. The plot, in a nutshell, revolves around animals gathering food.

When the nomadic raccoon RJ (voiced by Bruce Willis) loses a bag of chips to a stingy vending machine, his hunger drives him to do the unthinkable: try to steal the food stash from a giant hibernating bear (Nick Nolte). He’s about to get away with it when his greed for a Pringles-like can of chips takes him one step too far. The bear, Vincent, awakes, and RJ tries to flee, sending the food stash crashing down a mountain. Vincent’s about to gobble him up when RJ convinces him to give him a week’s reprieve as he tries to get everything back.

But where is he going to get all that food in one week? A billboard of a housing development shows RJ the way, but it’s still an impossible task for him to do alone. He needs help.

On his way to suburbia, RJ stumbles upon a family of creatures ? turtle, squirrel, skunk, possums and porcupines ? who come out of hibernation to find their forest has been walled off by a giant “Steve,” beyond which great pink creatures roam. The animals are crushed ? their forest is gone and with it their food. In them, RJ finds his suckers.

He takes the group under his wing. He tells them their “Steve” is a hedge, and the pink things are humans who have all the food they could possibly want. And great food, too.

The group’s leader, Verne (Gary Shandling), is suspicious of RJ and tells the others he’s not to be trusted. But RJ lures them with the tasty goodness of nacho chips. From there, RJ leads his new friends on Delta-force-style missions to retrieve all the items he needs to pay Vincent back, while trying to escape the Cruella-like president of the homeowners association and her hired exterminator. But even though RJ has every intention of using and losing his new associates, along the way he learns the value of friendship and family.

The animators and voice talent do a stellar job of bringing these varmints to life and infusing them with personality. William Shatner is typecast as an overacting possum who loves to play dead. Steve Carell voices the hyperactive squirrel Hammy. While the whole cast turns in solid performances, Willis, Wanda Sykes as Stella the Skunk and Thomas Haden Church as the exterminator are the standouts.

The writers also throw in a few touches for adults. The most charming sequence is when RJ educates his new friends about human society, describing all of humanity in food-centric terms. “For humans, enough is never enough,” he says.

These touches aside, this is more of a children’s movie than other animated films have been. The story is simple and repetitive. You’ll see many food-absconding missions and at least three scenes of bundles of food being destroyed. But you’ll get a couple of laughs, and the simple storyline will make the movie easily digestible for kids.