Correction: The protagonist’s name is RJ? Not CJ? I’ve seen this movie like four times and I always thought it was CJ. But no, it’s RJ. Also, I see some people saying that the film is not panned by critics and as it turns out, it's not that panned haha. That said, I DO very strongly remember my mom telling me it was critically panned, so I don't consider it an error on my part. I guess it was just my small vantage point at the time.
@@someguy974 an apartheid is when a country is largely made up of people of one race, but the government is run by people of another. Like in South Africa until the 90s
The movie's story would have been a lot better if the animals had never been suffering a lack of food. RJ could have just tempted them to try some of the things human have, even if they don't actually need them, further adding to the message about consuption and greed and comparing them to humans right from the start, also making the turle feel more like a voice of reason than like a conformist who rejects the plan but has no better alternative.
also movies abt food tend to lack something unless they're about the production of food or another more niche aspect (eg cloudy with a chance of meatballs). because everyone can relate to hunger and food, there's not many places you can go with the story that are interesting or compelling. it's just too normal.
4 года назад
@@hanaortiz7596 Buddy I still remember the movie, also wanna see the worst dream-works has to offer? Shark tale!
I get what your saying at here but like..... Do we really need that message? It’s a movie where there’s a squirrel that is fucking insane and in some scenes shows a turtles butt...so uh.... Yea I think it’s best it doesn’t have a deep message like that
How do you compare it to human rights in a compelling way of food is the representation but they aren’t suffering from a lack of it in the first place as you suggested
@@ziggybluwaters5060 The metaphor of food as human rights is the problem though, because the resolution is that taking food from the humans is wrong. This means the movie has the message that not all people need rights, or people artificially deprived of their rights should be happy with their situation.
if you subtract the contrived ending, it would be a great movie where the enemy is consumerism itself. interacting with it and letting it change you is death, but not interacting with it is also death. this feels like an incredibly relatable predicament to be in.
I think that is what the movie does, in a way, but since it’s a children’s movie it has a more optimistic tone. Life’s hard, consumerism is inescapable, but if you stick close and work together with your friends and family, you can still be happy. Maybe the catch-22 is relatable, but you don’t want to relate to the people who reject the system and ultimately die for it. This is unusually bleak even for adults. We want our kids to see an ideal situation where holding fast to our values, and being good, rewards us and shields us from a bad world.
My younger siblings got this thing on DVD. It used to be in frequent rotation. I distinctly remember one line from the bonus features in which the squirrel licks something and says "it tastes shiny". One of the two guys on commentary immediately repeated, verbatim, "it tastes shiny". Then they laughed politely. That has stuck in my brain since. It was so sterile. They knew what they'd made and that was as much as it mattered to them.
It's funny, I watched this movie once and the one thing I remember about the bonus features was a behind the scenes bit where they talked about how amazing the tech was because so many characters had hair and they had to animate it.
@@DavidMChannel I specifically remember that the animators had to place a limit on how many times the characters were allowed to hug, because it was so annoying to get all the fur to interact properly.
I thought the climax would at least get more attention because the animals hide in the hedge, are attacked from both sides, Hammy's consumption of soda saves the day, and the antagonists from both sides destroy each other. There's a metaphor in there somewhere.
Not to mention that that energy drink was the one thing even R. J. was aware was a bad idea for Hammy to have, so breaking his only boundary turned out to be a good idea on R. J.'s part.
The tools to dismantle capitalism come from within the system itself- seize the means of production. But in a postmodern consumerist world, where we consumers are comodified, the only way to break free is through consumption... Okay maybe that's a stretch.
Here in Mexico is titled "Vecinos Invasores", which translates to "Invading Neighbours", which is such a delight in hindsight given our relationship with a certain wall-obsessed Orange.
Jake Gutierrez Humans are more fish than sharks are. It depends on what “fish” means too. Sharks and bony fish separated, and only bony fish are our ancestors, making us closer then they are.
@@RaymaMcClure also, 'Over the Hedge' and 'Open season' both have a 4 letter word in the beginning of their name and the 1 word in their names also have an e on the third letter
You're seriously one of the only people on youtube I've ever come across who engages in serious analysis of pop/ children's media and not just like "Um, well a second ago the character was 2.3 inches tall, and now the character is 2.4 inches tall, so it's a bad TV show"
@@kittokattxx i mean if the shoe fits. but more about the cinemasins style of critique where u just look at weird minutia and draw blunted half brain conclusions from it
Friend_Qqqqq hard to call CinemaSins a serious critique channel. not because its content is bad as serious critique, but rather because the creators of the channel explicitly see their content as more comedic than intellectual.
The fact that they learn to settle down on their side of the hedge and be content is even more disturbing when you remember that the map of the suburbs they have marks their land as "future development." Settling down on their side of the hedge literally means remaining silent and waiting for an early death.
I don't know where everyone especially Joey gets the idea that they decided to never cross tha hedge again by tha film's conclusion...because it's never so much as even implied|
@@washada That was actually/partially my point: When watching a spoiler review especially keep in mind that the reviewer isn’t incapable of misconstruing tha piece in question and you would do well to reserve judgement for after seeing it yourself IF you wanna have a valid opinion on it yourself| ALSO Something I forgot to mention which is a spoiler on how Joe here was possibly led to his mistake is that [SPOILER HERE] there’s a running joke about Hammy finding his nuts amongst tha main narrative of filling tha log for tha Winter and Hammy fills tha log with his nuts by the end of tha feature|
I could be wrong, god knows I'm not rewatching this movie, but doesn't the turtle get annoyed at the humans calling him an amphibian? Which would imply that the animals can understand the humans. It's a vague memory, I can't promise it's accurate.
The only time I've ever won a crane game - a spinning one, no less - I was able to grab two RJ plush dolls in a single grab. I have since lost them both.
As a child, I watched Over The Hedge over and over again on VHS. Loved that movie. It reminds me of the peak of the experimental 3D animations era in the early 2000s. They were so meta and had weirdly modern stories that were both forgettable yet memorable at the same time, somehow..
@@TheSlowestBroseph Sure but there was no copy protection to prevent you from recording it to an otherwise empty VHS to watch again & again to your heart's content back then either|
Another thing to consider: in that map RJ kept showing, the enclosure left for the animals is labelled "Future Development!". That means that not only did the people take most of the foraging grounds from the animals, but will also someday take away what little was left to them. Even that patch of greenery left to them will be built over with more houses.
Hobbit Joel is slowly transforming into Dwarf Joel. That beard will be fit for braiding in a few months EDIT: Yeah, this movie is what happens when you decide to make a family friendly Watership Down.
Never considered it that way. In Watership Down human beings are forces of nature, impossible to predict or defeat. In Over the Hedge, they are separate from the biological and ecological threats the animals face.
Me early in the video: "huh, that sounds like this is a commentary on immigration and nationalism put in a way children could understand. Kinda dehumanizing, but alright." You, at the end of the video: "So the movie basically says that the animals always had enough resources and should've stayed where they were." Me: "FUCKING YIKES"
Huh I remember there being credit scenes or shorts that show them continuing to cross it. Just not falling into the trap of overconsumption this time. Maybe my brain made them up. I’ll have to rewatch it to see
@@Nortarachanges I haven't seen it in a while but they definitely do end on that; I don't know where Joey is getting the idea that they decide on never crossing tha hedge again| If it's because it ends on Hammy COMEDICLY having filled tha log with nuts then he's nuttier than that log despite his review skill up until that point|
when i was a kid i saw the trailer for this film and REALLY wanted to see it but never actually did. i went on to talk about over the hedge to all of my friends whenever i had an opportunity and i don’t mean they brought it up and i just said “oh yeah that’s a good film”. no, i referenced this film whenever i could, all i needed was to see a large hedge and i’d talk about how much i loved this film. none of my friends had ever seen it, it certainly wasn’t considered a cool movie and it wasn’t even new but for some reason this went on for YEARS. at some point i think i convinced myself i had watched it even though to this day i’ve only ever seen a minute long trailer. for context it came out when i was 4 and this went on until i was 11 and suddenly realised how weird my obsession was.
@@keklord4128 Yes, yes it was. I still remember it clearly: - Let's call him Edward! - Edward? - Eddy for short. :) - OH THE GREAT, MIGHTY EDWARD, WHAT DO YOU WANT?! Still cracks me up. xD
Okay I have a counterargument. As I understood it, this essay basically says that Over the Hedge makes human overconsumption a moral evil for the animals, which is a bad message because they don't have any options and stealing from humans is in reality their only way to survive. But over the hedge never really condemns the stealing from humans, it condemns RJ for doing it for selfish reasons. The stealing from humans isn't bad because they're losing their way (the whole mid-movie heist plot resolves that inter-animal conflict), it's bad cuz it puts them in danger for RJ's gain alone. This video is premised on Over the Hedge being about social differences between people (with the animals as proxies for some sort of human underclass). But when I was a kid it was much easier to interpret it quite literally as animals negotiating a human world that they didn't really understand. And if that's your starting point, I think it works pretty well. Because the movie fully endorses animals doing what they need to do to survive, and the humans are fully condemned, and the possibility of a real social negotiation between them isn't something that's an option by that very premise. You say that condemnation is of consumer culture, but I don't think that's true. The consumer culture is there, but the real violence the movie depicts is the total eradication of space, where the ability for animals to live alongside humans is made impossible by the total sterilization of all natural space in the suburbs. It's not the evil of consumption, that's a battle for resources taking place on top of ACTUAL violence against natural ecology, which takes place really palpably in the backdrop. And that critique of what suburbia represents about human influence was really apparent to me even as a kid. No kid was out here blaming the animals for descending into human gluttony, they were actively rooting for them and fully blaming the humans for conquering all of the space in the world of the film, refusing to coexist, and getting their comeuppance for thinking they could rid the world of everything beside themselves.
Yeah i share your view on it. If we boil it down, the movie is more about gentrification than anything else. The character of the exterminator embodies this the best; he is the authority that knows how to deal with pests, similar how many people trust the police (and by extention, the state) to suppress the elemental needs of pressured underclasses that they share with the middle and upper classes. The hedge as a metaphor for class divide also very appropriate with the proletarians (the Animals) moving through the hedge (i.e. achieving social mobility) being rejected, ostrasized and ultimately repressed by the Bourgeoisie and its middle class allies. It's a very anarchist movie, come to think of it.
Man, Thanks for making this video that reminded me why I fell in love with your channel when you had like ~3000 subscribers. This is just amazing. Keep up the good work!
Joel i can’t even focus on the beauty of oth’s peak trashness anymore because you just casually put (i’m a shark doctor) without any further explanation and i can’t stop thinking about it
I personally have a strange love for movies that are centered around a character we’re supposed to hate. I also love movies that are doomed from the start, the animals live in a small section that is titled “future development!” which tells the viewers that no matter what their home is going to be invaded in the end. Darker and more realistic themes are very fun to explore imo
I actually listen to Bach's keyboard works, and, in all three of these Dreamworks videos, the music softly playing over a scene I know it doesn't belong with gives me this visceral feeling I'm going crazy. Like every time I'm convinced my brain has just started playing music on its own.
I'm surprised throughout the video that you didn't mention that Over The Hedge was based on a comic strip of the same name (which is still ongoing, actually.) The film is a loose adaptaion, cause the comic is a gag of the day strip that does not have any long form plot. It is just RJ, Verne and Hammy trying to live in the woodlands while also having a keen interest of modern day technology we use, suburbia of course being over the hedge. Apart from the three characters I mentioned and the location and title, they are very different. I'm not saying it is any good, but I would recommend looking at a few randoms just to compare. It gets kind of wackier than the film.
Yes!! I was looking for someone else in the comments who knows the comic. I only wanted to see the movie because my older brother had given me an anthology of Over The Hedge comics, and I was surprised that the movie was nothing like the comics... although given that like you said there isn't a long form plot, and the jokes and references in the comics were so 90s I had no hope of understanding them in the early 2000s, idk what I expected.
If I can likewise read too much into this for a moment, I think there’s a weird implication that what consumerism really ruins about people is just the existential fact that when all your needs are met, your animal nature doesn’t know how to stop that stockpiling instinct. Applying it to actual animals is kind of fitting, really. Once your basic survival is guaranteed, you have to find something to live for, and I think the real theme here is that the raccoon chooses friends and community to fill that emptiness inside himself rather than the pursuit of more stuff. Practically speaking that is undercut by the whole food shortage thing, but at the very least limiting “going over the hedge” when possible does make sense with that theme.
While I recognize the film has flaws, I think as a kid when I watched it, I appreciated its satire of suburban life: humans living in close proximity to nature but insisting upon micro-managing how nature interacts with them. As someone who appreciated satire from a young age, and as someone who grew up in suburbia but also innately felt there was something very sick and wrong about the culture in which I was raised, Over the Hedge's admittedly half-baked satire spoke to me.
I was honestly impressed how this movie managed to actually make the "squirrel saves the day via potentially harmful caffeine consumption" bit funny even after Hoodwinked beat the movie to it. Even so, Twitchy was clearly the best part of Hoodwinked, being the one character who wasn't an Uncanny-Valley-dweller.
Your bill nye is too wide and it makes me feel complex emotions that I was not mature enough to confront and am now psychologically crippled yet have reached a higher spiritual plane. I'm suing you for damages.
Look, I love this movie. My favorite artist and actor (Ben Folds and Steve Carell) are in the film, it looked decent for the time it came out, and I think it’s one of the better talking animal movies. Especially considering that it has a semirelatable plot, with RJ and the the bear guy, as well as RJ and the forest gang. It’s a very interesting take on an animals perspective on the American Suburbs. The humor still holds up for me to this day (especially the animated feature Hammy’s Boomerang Adventure, that one’ a hoot), which is very impressive. It looks decent enough, has interesting characters and subplots with said characters, and is a good movie overall for kids and adults alike. The score (with terrific vocals from Ben Folds) fits the movie extremely well, and has some genuinely good songs in there too. The ‘Rockin The Suburbs’ remix at the end is always a good one. Also, it was pretty much the movie I watched weekly when I was between the ages of 4 and 6, so it basically shaped my childhood. No hard feelings though, still a good video! Also, the number of essays on this damn movie in this comments section is insane.
I hate that I noticed the name mistake so quickly. I haven't seen it in years. How did I remember his name was RJ? I don't remember any of the other characters' names...well, I remember Heather, for some reason. That's it, though.
Alright, haven't watched the video yet. Time to test my memory... RJ, Vincent, Vern, Hammy, Stella, Tiger, Lou, Bucky, Quillo, Spike, The Verminator... …Two minutes, stalled. I know I'm missing Heather's dad, the mother porcupine, and the president of the homeowner's association. :/
The most notable thing about this movie for me is that it solidified my hatred for the ‘liar revealed’ plot line, and from that point on plots that used the ‘end of second act low point’ variations soured my opinion of the work as a whole. I just don’t like it
Come to think of it, have we ever seen Stanley Kubrick and Big Joel in the same room at the same time? My money is on Kubrick turning into a star child after he died, reincarnating as Big Joel. @Big Joel your job is now to complete Napoleon
to be fair you have to have a very high iq to understand stefan molynМы начинаем наше космическое путешествие в те времена, когда трава была зеленее и музыка прекраснее, когда еще не было плохой музыки, дабы вернуть давно утерянную формулу хорошей музыки. Рассекая пространство и время, мы слышим звуки божественной музыки, в которой каждая нота находится на своем месте. Кажется нечто подобное испытывают люди когда слушают альбомы Sigur Ros, некое блаженное чувтсво. Это состояние невозможно описать, трудно уловить и легко потерять, но удивительно, на всем протяжении нашего путешествия оно все усиливается и усиливается. В окне иллюминатора пролетают все самые значимые музыкальные и исторические вехи в истории. Важна уже не конечная точка прибытия, а само путешествие, потому что стремление - вот самое главное в нашей жизни, достигнув определенной точки нам обязательно захочется продолжить путешествие дальше. Честно говоря я уже не знаю где мы находимся, достигли мы того самого места? И где это место? Скорее всего мы улетели намного дальше, за пределы пространства времени. Неужели мы так и не нашли формулы? неужели все напрасно? Наше путешествие - вот та самая формула, точнее одна из ее композиций, собранная из обрывков воспоминаний. Вычислить ее невозможно, но нам крупно повезло и мы стали редкими счастливчиками которым открылась одна из идеальных музыкальных композиций. Сможем ли мы когда-нибудь повторить это путешествие… возможно не скоро, но когда-нибудь обязательно, а пока нужно вернуться на землю и передать человечеству данные собранные нашими датчиками. Мы не настолько умны чтобы из полученных данных вычислить формулу, но зато у нас появилась одна из композиций сгенерированных этой идеальной фор
I'm 13 minutes into the video and I'm not hearing anything about the miraculous fact that Bruce Willis isn't sleep-walking his way through another performance. He actually does really good here.
When we say 'humpty dumpty sat on a wall' what *is* the wall? What exactly does it do? 1. It separates humpty dumpty from the ground 2. It set him up for the great fall he take in a later line 3. As a boundary, It shows that humpty dumpty chooses to belong to neither world on either side of the wall, and the great fall shows how precarious his position is on the boundary between these two worlds. This shows the major flaw in this nursery rhyme: humpty dumpty finds himself not belonging to the communities he's surrounded by, always riding the border, and this is presented as a bad thing At the same time, as soon as humpty dumpty leaves this precarious position, he is met with disaster, and 'all the kings horses and all the kings men', the inhabitants of this some of the border, have no way of dissolving this disaster. For humpty dumpty, to ride the border is dangerous, and to leave is death; where is there for our hero to go at this point? We can never find out because story seems to just end abruptly with no resolution. My interest in humpty dumpty began before my formal interest in nursery rhymes, I alsdfjr dk$($[#*#*@*#*$$&%*%*$>$* In conclusion, this nursury rhyme is garbage. Thank you for reading my review
@@kdovy-pb4db Way, way, waaay too coherent for Ben Shapiro. He'd be more like "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, and then fell off and broke. This story teaches kids that it's okay to injure men!"
I just realized that the only time I think I ever saw this movie as a kid was in clips at my orthodontist. They had TVs installed above each chair so you could watch a movie while they did whatever procedure. I had lots of pretty major dental work as a kid, so I realize that means i pretty much only remember ever seeing this movie while blitzed on laughing gas and valium. Thank you for returning this memory to me.
18:46 What I like is that you specifically mistakenly said porcupine. Could've been any animal but you chose porcupine. There's an alternate universe out there where everything is literally the exact same as ours except for the single difference that you said an animal other than porcupine. This video in that universe is technically more correct, and this comment doesn't exist.
This movie is actually great, though. Joel never watched it seriously enough to not call the raccoon CJ and never let it be itself. It has a great soundtrack and a unique, cartoony comic style that modern CG movies have strayed further and further away from. It knows it's stupid! It's adapted from (rather good) source material made by two ex-Disney comic cartoonists. I think Joel missed something about the ending and theme. The nuts are a gag. They have the effect of reducing their reliance on the humans, that is, assuming the others even want them seeing as nuts are kind of a squirrel thing. But let's go ahead and grant it. They will eventually run out or get tired of them and will still be kicking over cans and raiding food, but they will be doing it much less because they don't have a production-exploitation quota to meet for a debatably capitalist bear. Yes, civilization is bad. Yes, if they don't engage with it they will starve. The nuts aren't really a cop-out which is why the movie doesn't really end with celebration. Yes, they are quite likely to get developed over at a later date. The resolution says we are like the animals. We are awoken, but ultimately we must engage past our homes with the supermarket and society and work. What we must do instead is to limit our engagement and fit it into our healthy, natural lifestyles. Find a balance between the two extremes. In the credit sequence you can see they still have the magic TV that doesn't need electricity and use it, along with various other things, but it doesn't feel like they have this hole inside saying they need more, more, more, that the humans do. And as someone from a third world country with a very anti-consumerist mother I dig what this movie has to say. It's still a favorite. I actually know a few people who don't like this movie and it always seemed to me that it was more because what it had to say didn't sit well with them personally. Just a hunch though.
Oh, also, I meant to expand on the fact that there are strong themes of overconsumption. Even at the beginning, RJ tells himself "just take what you need", and it's him doing exactly not this that fucks him over. Why does he think he needs the Spuddies ("enough is never enough")? Because he doesn't have family, he's seeking value in the material and he will never find satisfaction if he knows there is something out there that he doesn't have. Vincent's villain speech is legitimately super well done, he's holding the fucking Spuddies while he tells RJ that all he needs is food. You think it's just a running gag, "oh, that's just the movie coming full circle" But no, he's holding the product that is literally taglined "enough is never enough", WHILE HE TELLS RJ HOW GOOD IT IS TO HAVE EVERYTHING YOU WANT. AND WHAT HAPPENS IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT? RJ LEAVES HIM ALONE WITH THE SPUDDIES. That's not even the only thing. The whole plot with getting Vincent a shit ton of food is what I meant by why he's kind of a capitalist. That's way more food than he needs as evidenced by the fact hibernation was ending and he still had the entire family fun size whatever fuck. So we have a plot set up that entails Vincent wanting all this shit he doesn't need and having someone who promises to get it for him. Behind the scenes, RJ uses exploitative labor to meet the deadline so he doesn't fucking die. Vincent doesn't even know what methods RJ uses, it could be fucking magic as far as he's concerned, and moreover, the only extent to which he cares is gratification in seeing someone else turn out like him when he sees the fallout. It's Vincent's greed that causes the cast to suffer, when otherwise, they either a) would have somehow adapted without going over the hedge at all, or b) would have learned how to raid trash without RJ (although it was probably better in the long run that he showed up). This movie is literally high art and I hope your asshole explodes if you think otherwise. Mic drop.
@@Liliputian07 Well yes, but OTH is actually STILL edgy because of where it sees greed in every day life and not just as something people who eat gold and cartoon villains do.
Something I realised whilst watching this is that it has a similar premise to Pom Poko where a small group of surviving animals have to eek out an existence in the face urbanisation. Pom Poko has a much more interesting and nuanced ending where the failure of the tanuki to preserve their forest due to the expansion of Tokyo leads them to take a couple strategies. They either disguise themselves as humans (tanuki in Japanese mythology were thought to be shapeshifters in case people weren't aware), or just live as animals on the streets of Tokyo/the few naturally preserved areas that humans have conserved as they've become conscious of the environmental and ecological cost to their urbanisation.
Remove the bear. RJ, a suburban raccoon desperate for food, sneaks through the imposing hedge he'd been conditioned to avoid, and finds the motherlode - a huge log filled with nuts, berries, and enough food to last him all year round. Before he can pig out, however, he's discovered by Vern, and in his attempts to get out of trouble RJ accidentally destroys the log, losing all of the forest's food a week before hibernation. With the entire forest now pissed at him, RJ gives them an offer in exchange for his life: teaching them how to steal food from the human civilization over the hedge. The plot is now far less muddled, and with the added bonus of no bullshit liar revealed plotline.
If this movie was harsher and stuck more to real consequences, this film could have more meaning. Have someone say at the end "But what about next winter?" and then end the film by slowly going up and showing how small the preserve is to the town.
You can't. The ending is not the problem: The earlier parts of the movie set it up so it could not really end any other way. Not if you are confined to the happy endings required of a children's film, anyway.
I understand what youre saying but i really dont think this is about becomming like the humans. Its about family and fraternity, the humans are only objects that create the conflict needed for that theme. I dont agree that this film goes for the same thing as shrek and shark tale
It seems like they overwhelmingly want the film to be one kind of tale, and then when it doesn't fit in that box they act confused. "huh, this is broken and weird, it doesn't do what I want it to do".
@@dakat5131 or could it be that the text can be discussed and shown to be contradictory. Parochialism is bad. Don't believe in death of the author though.
Then what would the point be of humans acting as antagonists? If the humans literally pinned the animals in together, wouldn't that be regarded as a good thing? Why would 2/3 of the antagonists be human, and why would the hedge create nothing but problems? (Am I replying a year late to a comment about Over the Hedge discourse? Yes. Yes, I am.)
Ever play the DS game? It's probably my favorite movie tie-in game ever. (there was a second DS game, but it wasn't the same concept - the good one is just "Over The Hedge") It's not particularly polished but the over-the-shoulder third person stealth with small animals sneaking through houses and getting around traps and patrolling humans/pets is the most unique take on a movie's core concepts I've seen in a tie-in game. They actually seemed to care about doing something new and different, and while I wouldn't really call it a great game today, I think it's still interesting enough to warrant picking it up if you happen to find it cheap.
Dude. I think you're thinking too hard about the hedge. When RJ shows them the map where their territory is, it literally says "For future development" it wasn't put there to keep animals out. It was so that the home owners could look at a clean cut hedge instead of a random cluster of trees untill they put more houses there.
I like to think the "future development" is simply a hint that the animals are simply putting off the inevitable. Even though its implied by the Verminator's posture that he is a malignant force that will kill them instead of taking them to another habitat. Even if he and the bitch that caused their troubles over the events of the film are gone, the underlying doom is still approaching, and that is being consumed by consumerism. The Hedge may not necessarily be a boundary, yet more of a manifestation of the expansion. A towering, faceless entity that will end the new status quo the animals find themselves in. I'm certain the ultimate message left is we need to give up individualism because what's more important is having a family to brave the new world/ultimate doom. There is perhaps nothing scarier than succumbing to the inevitable end alone with nothing fullfilled from being alone.
"Over the Hedge" is my favorite Dreamworks movie! I feel like it's critique of hyperconsumerism and the perils of an ultra- capitalist society is actually not important. The movie is about RJ looking for a family of his own, albeit not being honest about it.
I also saw this movie as a kid but I was familiar with the comic first so I always loved it because it is like an origin story. In the comic strips they obviously found a sort of balance between the natural world and the human world, so the ending of the movie never bothered me.
Over the Hedge was based on a comic strip. The name comes because the animals come from over the hedge next next to Suburbia and how they live around and live like humans, because humans are just animals too. The first comic strip ever written is literally about two humans about to engage in... private adult activities, and the animals are literally watching on bleachers outside of their window. It was designed to be a commentary on how humans are animals by putting animals in human positions but also (most of the time) making them seem smarter and funnier than us. The movie just goes against that completely in my opinion and felt like whoever had a hand in making the movie never read the comic at all.
I think _most_ movie adaptions aren't familiar with the source material at all. Supposedly before starting work on the original Jungle Book, Walt Disney held up a copy of the book in front of all his writers and animators and such. He said, "Your first task is to _not_ rēad the story!" and he tossed it in the trash.
As disrespectful to the source material as it seems to be (I say "seems" because I didn't read the comic), I think it's for the better. Just look at how many people love the movie!
@Abbiemation The skunk needs to be disguised as a cat at one point...and for some reason they had to stick a cork in her ass to keep her from being smelly? Later on in the movie it's implied it rockets out of her ass because she had to spray some enemies
In that case, I highly recommend Nick Robinson's 24 minute masterpiece "The Problem with Mario's Hair". It's in the top percentage of all video essays.
To me, the title over the hedge doesn’t actually imply the literal hedge itself in the movie. I think it’s a expression towards what RJ was trying to do, because he went overboard. He didn’t need to steal all of Vincent’s food, he didn’t even need all of it, he just needed one little snack to satisfy himself for the night. But because he couldn’t get the snack because of misfortune, he decided go for all of Vincent’s food, and with that, fails spectacularly. With that, RJ literally went over the hedge with what he needed, therefore driving himself in lingering debt for his actions.
more than anything what strikes me about these movies is that i watched them as a teen and got annoyed by the kids sitting in the audience but now one of those kids grew up and made half hour videos about them.
I got the sense that the animals were going to cross the hedge in time but only enough to live comfortably. They learned to “shear the sheep without skinning it” Basically they reversed the dynamic where the humans are now a resource for them to exploit but they have to be careful not to exhaust that supply.
I'd need to watch that movie again, but I feel the base point you construct it as being about is not what it was going for. Totally agree on the butt crack joke being awful though. Even when I was a kid that moment always stuck out to me as a shitty joke in an otherwise likeable movie.
I think the major element missing from your analysis is not only that it's bad for animals to act like humans, but that it's bad for humans to act like humans, too. Acting like the humans in this movie do is framed as bad period, no matter who is doing it. Going over the hedge is bad, because being on the consumerist side of the hedge is bad. Not because it's unnatural for animals or because breaking artificial boundaries is bad. The message still is "be authentic to yourself", and the only reason the artificial boundary isn't broken is because, in this specific situation the movie creates, there is nothing good on the other side of that boundary.
I actually thought this movie was hilarious when it first came out, and with some notable names in the voice acting such as Bruce Willis, Steve Carell, William Shatner and the late Garry Shandling. While the late 2000's was seen as a bit of a dark age for DreamWorks Animation, it did still have its fair share of hidden gems.
@@GTA5Player1 - I thought his point was that the movie itself started off with a decent idea, but it kind of doesn't come together as a good film at the end.
holy crap, sounds like this movie could also work as a story about drug addiction. even down to the bit about how rj doesnt turn away from going over the hedge until he has a supportive community. and stuff like, turning to drugs because of poverty and the idea of choosing not to go over the hedge anymore even though there is lots to discover there. idk. I really like your idea this just popped into my head. ive been binging your whole channel the last couple days. great stuff! Thank you
Correction: The protagonist’s name is RJ? Not CJ? I’ve seen this movie like four times and I always thought it was CJ. But no, it’s RJ.
Also, I see some people saying that the film is not panned by critics and as it turns out, it's not that panned haha. That said, I DO very strongly remember my mom telling me it was critically panned, so I don't consider it an error on my part. I guess it was just my small vantage point at the time.
Big oof
raccoon jr
Big Joel Well, then that completely ruins this video essay.
All you had to do was turn on the subtitles CJ!
It's almost like this movie is incapable of leaving meaningful impressions, no matter how many times you try to ram it into your brain.
Over the Hedge or 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apartheid'
@@someguy974 The film 'Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb", a satire on the Cold War
I love this comment.
@@someguy974 an apartheid is when a country is largely made up of people of one race, but the government is run by people of another. Like in South Africa until the 90s
@@drewp.weiner5708 Facts are bait now?
@@drewp.weiner5708 Trying what?
I watched this movie an upsetting amount of times as a child.
Once was upsetting.
Me too. It was my favorite movie as kid
Same
When you're attracted to turtle butt and don't want anyone to find out so you just watch the whole movie.
@@goctagonrecovery3270 me too oof
The movie's story would have been a lot better if the animals had never been suffering a lack of food.
RJ could have just tempted them to try some of the things human have, even if they don't actually need them, further adding to the message about consuption and greed and comparing them to humans right from the start, also making the turle feel more like a voice of reason than like a conformist who rejects the plan but has no better alternative.
also movies abt food tend to lack something unless they're about the production of food or another more niche aspect (eg cloudy with a chance of meatballs). because everyone can relate to hunger and food, there's not many places you can go with the story that are interesting or compelling. it's just too normal.
@@hanaortiz7596 Buddy I still remember the movie, also wanna see the worst dream-works has to offer? Shark tale!
I get what your saying at here but like.....
Do we really need that message?
It’s a movie where there’s a squirrel that is fucking insane and in some scenes shows a turtles butt...so uh....
Yea I think it’s best it doesn’t have a deep message like that
How do you compare it to human rights in a compelling way of food is the representation but they aren’t suffering from a lack of it in the first place as you suggested
@@ziggybluwaters5060 The metaphor of food as human rights is the problem though, because the resolution is that taking food from the humans is wrong. This means the movie has the message that not all people need rights, or people artificially deprived of their rights should be happy with their situation.
if you subtract the contrived ending, it would be a great movie where the enemy is consumerism itself. interacting with it and letting it change you is death, but not interacting with it is also death. this feels like an incredibly relatable predicament to be in.
What you just described there is the actual ending despite what Joey is insisting|
I think that is what the movie does, in a way, but since it’s a children’s movie it has a more optimistic tone. Life’s hard, consumerism is inescapable, but if you stick close and work together with your friends and family, you can still be happy. Maybe the catch-22 is relatable, but you don’t want to relate to the people who reject the system and ultimately die for it. This is unusually bleak even for adults. We want our kids to see an ideal situation where holding fast to our values, and being good, rewards us and shields us from a bad world.
Me: “I promise I won’t analyze the philosophical meanings of mid 2000’s animated movies” three drinks later: “this video”
Me @ WALL-E
My younger siblings got this thing on DVD. It used to be in frequent rotation. I distinctly remember one line from the bonus features in which the squirrel licks something and says "it tastes shiny". One of the two guys on commentary immediately repeated, verbatim, "it tastes shiny". Then they laughed politely.
That has stuck in my brain since. It was so sterile. They knew what they'd made and that was as much as it mattered to them.
It's funny, I watched this movie once and the one thing I remember about the bonus features was a behind the scenes bit where they talked about how amazing the tech was because so many characters had hair and they had to animate it.
That line stuck with you too?
tamatoa's levels of shininess
Juicelad Timone “When he was a young warthoooooog”
@@DavidMChannel I specifically remember that the animators had to place a limit on how many times the characters were allowed to hug, because it was so annoying to get all the fur to interact properly.
I thought the climax would at least get more attention because the animals hide in the hedge, are attacked from both sides, Hammy's consumption of soda saves the day, and the antagonists from both sides destroy each other. There's a metaphor in there somewhere.
Not to mention that that energy drink was the one thing even R. J. was aware was a bad idea for Hammy to have, so breaking his only boundary turned out to be a good idea on R. J.'s part.
I hate to ask but what is the metaphor?
A Choking Fish Fuck if I know.
@@jacobb.9181
To some extent, dangers exist on both sides of the boundary. Once an individual no longer fits into either side, what happens?
The tools to dismantle capitalism come from within the system itself- seize the means of production. But in a postmodern consumerist world, where we consumers are comodified, the only way to break free is through consumption... Okay maybe that's a stretch.
"I really like eating eyeballs and living on a swamp and doing the big fart." -Shrek (2001)
It’s actually fard 😕
@@mrfriendlolo4971 shid
@@mrfriendlolo4971 fardquard
In german it's called "Ab durch die Hecke". Translated it kinda means "Let's go through the hedge".
Germans over here with those real solutions
In the Russian version they didn’t even bother and released it as ‘Forest Fellas’
In portuguese it's called "Os Sem Floresta", meaning The forestless, making a joke that they are slowly losing the forest, their homes.
In French it's called "Nos voisins, les hommes", which translates to "Humans, our neighbors", or "Humans next door".
Here in Mexico is titled "Vecinos Invasores", which translates to "Invading Neighbours", which is such a delight in hindsight given our relationship with a certain wall-obsessed Orange.
But Sharks are Fi-
Oh
did we met in contractor vr? ive seen that profile picture more than i can count XD
-smooth? Yes. As smooth as a baby's bottom.
@@maxproulx8235 it's a publically available image from the Bleach anime (manga?)
You just got visited by the shark doctor
Jake Gutierrez Humans are more fish than sharks are. It depends on what “fish” means too. Sharks and bony fish separated, and only bony fish are our ancestors, making us closer then they are.
Does Over the Hedge and Open Season take place in the same universe? I mean they both start with O
Fennecfoxfanatic This is a well thought out, well explained, theory. Surprised no one has thought of this sooner!!! It all connects.
@@RaymaMcClure also, 'Over the Hedge' and 'Open season' both have a 4 letter word in the beginning of their name and the 1 word in their names also have an e on the third letter
One is DreamWorks and the other is Sony Pictures
DreamWorks and Sony Pictures also take place in the same universe though (confirmed in canon).
@Country Toads Take Me Home
Actually, Over the Hedge has two words with an e as the third letter. Your argument is invalid.
You're seriously one of the only people on youtube I've ever come across who engages in serious analysis of pop/ children's media and not just like "Um, well a second ago the character was 2.3 inches tall, and now the character is 2.4 inches tall, so it's a bad TV show"
are you talking about steven universe
@@kittokattxx i mean if the shoe fits. but more about the cinemasins style of critique where u just look at weird minutia and draw blunted half brain conclusions from it
Friend_Qqqqq hard to call CinemaSins a serious critique channel. not because its content is bad as serious critique, but rather because the creators of the channel explicitly see their content as more comedic than intellectual.
Mr enter lol
This is just left wing media critique Vs right wing media critique tbh. Lefties look at what stuff means while righties look at what it is.
Uh oh, that emo opossum girl who I based my entire 10-13 yr old personality on is baCK TO HAUNT ME Nooooooooooo
she was my gay awakening
The fact that they learn to settle down on their side of the hedge and be content is even more disturbing when you remember that the map of the suburbs they have marks their land as "future development." Settling down on their side of the hedge literally means remaining silent and waiting for an early death.
I don't know where everyone especially Joey gets the idea that they decided to never cross tha hedge again by tha film's conclusion...because it's never so much as even implied|
@@washada That was actually/partially my point: When watching a spoiler review especially keep in mind that the reviewer isn’t incapable of misconstruing tha piece in question and you would do well to reserve judgement for after seeing it yourself IF you wanna have a valid opinion on it yourself|
ALSO
Something I forgot to mention which is a spoiler on how Joe here was possibly led to his mistake is that [SPOILER HERE] there’s a running joke about Hammy finding his nuts amongst tha main narrative of filling tha log for tha Winter and Hammy fills tha log with his nuts by the end of tha feature|
but at least when they do die they'll die with family values
Today, a shark doctor taught me that porcupines eat bark
I could be wrong, god knows I'm not rewatching this movie, but doesn't the turtle get annoyed at the humans calling him an amphibian? Which would imply that the animals can understand the humans. It's a vague memory, I can't promise it's accurate.
You are correct
Yep. The animals can all very clearly understand the humans.
Also, the kids drive the car following the GPS commands.
It Is. I've watched it enough times
Yes! I vividly remember that!
The only time I've ever won a crane game - a spinning one, no less - I was able to grab two RJ plush dolls in a single grab. I have since lost them both.
You are literally the Bear.
You didn’t lose them. They escaped.
Legend
The part where Hammy says: "... I'm not stupid." was such a raw scene, tho.
As a child, I watched Over The Hedge over and over again on VHS. Loved that movie. It reminds me of the peak of the experimental 3D animations era in the early 2000s. They were so meta and had weirdly modern stories that were both forgettable yet memorable at the same time, somehow..
tbh I kind of like some of the older animated films more than newer ones. Even some "bad" ones.
Over the Hedge never had a VHS release, in fact it was the first Dreamworks film not to be released on VHS.
The soundtrack is a banger tho, Ben Folds is one of the best artists on this earth
@@TheSlowestBroseph Sure but there was no copy protection to prevent you from recording it to an otherwise empty VHS to watch again & again to your heart's content back then either|
@@keirtanaka2929 true, someone probably recorded a TV airing of the movie on VHS, we did that all the time when I was a kid
Another thing to consider: in that map RJ kept showing, the enclosure left for the animals is labelled "Future Development!". That means that not only did the people take most of the foraging grounds from the animals, but will also someday take away what little was left to them. Even that patch of greenery left to them will be built over with more houses.
Hobbit Joel is slowly transforming into Dwarf Joel. That beard will be fit for braiding in a few months
EDIT: Yeah, this movie is what happens when you decide to make a family friendly Watership Down.
Never considered it that way. In Watership Down human beings are forces of nature, impossible to predict or defeat. In Over the Hedge, they are separate from the biological and ecological threats the animals face.
You forget to mention when the squirrel dude literally uses *[THE WORLD]* to save his friends
Why you are in every video i watch
Wow, I’m here before 1k likes.
@@osku7957 bots+Quantom computing is an amazing combination
@@aturchomicz821 Justin is a real boy!
Yeah like why
"On some weird level, I feel like Over the Hedge is part of the reason why I'm so obsessed with movies like Over the Hedge."
“Hmm, yes, the floor here is made out of floor”
Me early in the video: "huh, that sounds like this is a commentary on immigration and nationalism put in a way children could understand. Kinda dehumanizing, but alright."
You, at the end of the video: "So the movie basically says that the animals always had enough resources and should've stayed where they were."
Me: "FUCKING YIKES"
Huh I remember there being credit scenes or shorts that show them continuing to cross it. Just not falling into the trap of overconsumption this time. Maybe my brain made them up. I’ll have to rewatch it to see
@@Nortarachanges I haven't seen it in a while but they definitely do end on that; I don't know where Joey is getting the idea that they decide on never crossing tha hedge again|
If it's because it ends on Hammy COMEDICLY having filled tha log with nuts then he's nuttier than that log despite his review skill up until that point|
What's wrong with it?
@@BasedAccountLmao It's a disturbing and dehumanizing way to think about immigrants?
OH
Trash? This is a cinematic masterpiece!!
AMENN
👏👏👏
right!
Hallelujah!
It's strange how this film has this cult appeal, that said I'm part of it... though it might be nostalgia goggles for me.
when i was a kid i saw the trailer for this film and REALLY wanted to see it but never actually did. i went on to talk about over the hedge to all of my friends whenever i had an opportunity and i don’t mean they brought it up and i just said “oh yeah that’s a good film”. no, i referenced this film whenever i could, all i needed was to see a large hedge and i’d talk about how much i loved this film. none of my friends had ever seen it, it certainly wasn’t considered a cool movie and it wasn’t even new but for some reason this went on for YEARS. at some point i think i convinced myself i had watched it even though to this day i’ve only ever seen a minute long trailer. for context it came out when i was 4 and this went on until i was 11 and suddenly realised how weird my obsession was.
It means u r a furry
I do this with several famousmovies myself i feel you
damn
@SomethingScanning Good for you.
Did you ever see it? Did it live up to your expectations? I don’t do thus with movies, i do this with games.
You forgot the Hedges name was Steve.
0/10 garbage review lol jk.
Im pretty sure in the polish version the hedge was called edward
@@keklord4128 Yes, yes it was. I still remember it clearly:
- Let's call him Edward!
- Edward?
- Eddy for short. :)
- OH THE GREAT, MIGHTY EDWARD, WHAT DO YOU WANT?!
Still cracks me up. xD
@@robertlupa8273 yea they done tried sacrificing the turtle to it
No it was named Funds. Hedge Funds.
Okay I have a counterargument. As I understood it, this essay basically says that Over the Hedge makes human overconsumption a moral evil for the animals, which is a bad message because they don't have any options and stealing from humans is in reality their only way to survive. But over the hedge never really condemns the stealing from humans, it condemns RJ for doing it for selfish reasons. The stealing from humans isn't bad because they're losing their way (the whole mid-movie heist plot resolves that inter-animal conflict), it's bad cuz it puts them in danger for RJ's gain alone.
This video is premised on Over the Hedge being about social differences between people (with the animals as proxies for some sort of human underclass). But when I was a kid it was much easier to interpret it quite literally as animals negotiating a human world that they didn't really understand. And if that's your starting point, I think it works pretty well. Because the movie fully endorses animals doing what they need to do to survive, and the humans are fully condemned, and the possibility of a real social negotiation between them isn't something that's an option by that very premise. You say that condemnation is of consumer culture, but I don't think that's true. The consumer culture is there, but the real violence the movie depicts is the total eradication of space, where the ability for animals to live alongside humans is made impossible by the total sterilization of all natural space in the suburbs. It's not the evil of consumption, that's a battle for resources taking place on top of ACTUAL violence against natural ecology, which takes place really palpably in the backdrop.
And that critique of what suburbia represents about human influence was really apparent to me even as a kid. No kid was out here blaming the animals for descending into human gluttony, they were actively rooting for them and fully blaming the humans for conquering all of the space in the world of the film, refusing to coexist, and getting their comeuppance for thinking they could rid the world of everything beside themselves.
Hi Joe :)
Yeah i share your view on it. If we boil it down, the movie is more about gentrification than anything else. The character of the exterminator embodies this the best; he is the authority that knows how to deal with pests, similar how many people trust the police (and by extention, the state) to suppress the elemental needs of pressured underclasses that they share with the middle and upper classes. The hedge as a metaphor for class divide also very appropriate with the proletarians (the Animals) moving through the hedge (i.e. achieving social mobility) being rejected, ostrasized and ultimately repressed by the Bourgeoisie and its middle class allies. It's a very anarchist movie, come to think of it.
@@Donnerbalken28 this is not man v.s. man... this is man v.s. rodent
you: "The plot to this movie is weirdly centered around chips"
me: Same, movie. Same.
over the hedge sweetie im so sorry this dude would even say something like that,, we all know you're perfect
Nice video but next time just remember that porcupines are fish and sharks do in fact eat bark
You kid, but porcupines are actually part of the taxon of Bony Fish known as Osteichthyes.
Man, Thanks for making this video that reminded me why I fell in love with your channel when you had like ~3000 subscribers. This is just amazing. Keep up the good work!
“CJ says humans are obsessed with food”
Me, eating a four course midnight snack while watching this: Where would he get such an idea
fun fact: in russia this movie is called "Forest Brotherhood"
And Shark Tale is called "Underwater Brotherhood"
"The forest animals have nothing to lose but their hedge, but they have a world to gain. Working creatures of the woodland, rise up!" - Karl Fox
@@KoylTrane and Shrek is called 'Swamp Brotherhood'
Joel i can’t even focus on the beauty of oth’s peak trashness anymore because you just casually put (i’m a shark doctor) without any further explanation and i can’t stop thinking about it
S a m e
well, he's a shark doctor
does that clear anything up?
@@Liliputian07 does that mean he's a shark AND a doctor? Cuz that'd be lit🔥💯
Is anyone calling you Hedgry in the comments or is it just me who is the smartest and funniest person in the world?
R/iamverysmart
@@joshuachamberlain1485 Are you implying that I'm not the smartest and funniest person in the world? :/
@@mothcub r/whoosh
It's funny because most people who come from Reddit or mention Reddit threads arent funny either
@@AmbivalentRollerz at least I don't claim too be
About to write an angry comment about you hating this movie but at least you acknowledged that a lot of people like it. Crises averted
Why would you be angry that someone dislikes a movie you liked?
Loryska it was a bad joke
@@ffreeze9924 A really bad joke
P0RT4L: N3WB FTW Hey, just like this movie!
me too!
I personally have a strange love for movies that are centered around a character we’re supposed to hate. I also love movies that are doomed from the start, the animals live in a small section that is titled “future development!” which tells the viewers that no matter what their home is going to be invaded in the end. Darker and more realistic themes are very fun to explore imo
I actually listen to Bach's keyboard works, and, in all three of these Dreamworks videos, the music softly playing over a scene I know it doesn't belong with gives me this visceral feeling I'm going crazy. Like every time I'm convinced my brain has just started playing music on its own.
Admit it Big Joel, you're just bashing on this film to try and hide your blatant and honestly kind of pathetic crush on Verne
I'm surprised throughout the video that you didn't mention that Over The Hedge was based on a comic strip of the same name (which is still ongoing, actually.) The film is a loose adaptaion, cause the comic is a gag of the day strip that does not have any long form plot. It is just RJ, Verne and Hammy trying to live in the woodlands while also having a keen interest of modern day technology we use, suburbia of course being over the hedge.
Apart from the three characters I mentioned and the location and title, they are very different. I'm not saying it is any good, but I would recommend looking at a few randoms just to compare. It gets kind of wackier than the film.
Yes!! I was looking for someone else in the comments who knows the comic. I only wanted to see the movie because my older brother had given me an anthology of Over The Hedge comics, and I was surprised that the movie was nothing like the comics... although given that like you said there isn't a long form plot, and the jokes and references in the comics were so 90s I had no hope of understanding them in the early 2000s, idk what I expected.
If I can likewise read too much into this for a moment, I think there’s a weird implication that what consumerism really ruins about people is just the existential fact that when all your needs are met, your animal nature doesn’t know how to stop that stockpiling instinct. Applying it to actual animals is kind of fitting, really. Once your basic survival is guaranteed, you have to find something to live for, and I think the real theme here is that the raccoon chooses friends and community to fill that emptiness inside himself rather than the pursuit of more stuff. Practically speaking that is undercut by the whole food shortage thing, but at the very least limiting “going over the hedge” when possible does make sense with that theme.
"But I like the cookie."
- Hammy The Squirrel
^Steve Carrell.
This squirrel is also Michael Scott and Felonious Gru.
While I recognize the film has flaws, I think as a kid when I watched it, I appreciated its satire of suburban life: humans living in close proximity to nature but insisting upon micro-managing how nature interacts with them. As someone who appreciated satire from a young age, and as someone who grew up in suburbia but also innately felt there was something very sick and wrong about the culture in which I was raised, Over the Hedge's admittedly half-baked satire spoke to me.
ME TOO! Couldn’t have said it better myself
Avril Lavigne should have gotten an Oscar for that performance
ECKohns yeah she was one of the possums
apologist. That was Avril Lavigne?!
My sister had to point this out to me back in the day. 🙄
Only reason she watched the movie!
Heather the cute opossum
I was always confused as to why she was in the film. Running short of cash?
I like animated caffeinated squirrels. I got this and I got Hoodwinked.
ZA WARUDO
I was honestly impressed how this movie managed to actually make the "squirrel saves the day via potentially harmful caffeine consumption" bit funny even after Hoodwinked beat the movie to it. Even so, Twitchy was clearly the best part of Hoodwinked, being the one character who wasn't an Uncanny-Valley-dweller.
In WWI, troops went over the edge. In 2008 or whatever, humanity went Over the Hedge.
During the Great Depression, many working class men went Over the Ledge
Your bill nye is too wide and it makes me feel complex emotions that I was not mature enough to confront and am now psychologically crippled yet have reached a higher spiritual plane. I'm suing you for damages.
@@Hellooo134 Therapist: T H I C C Bill Ney isn't real; he can't hurt you. T H I C C Bill Nye:
Look, I love this movie. My favorite artist and actor (Ben Folds and Steve Carell) are in the film, it looked decent for the time it came out, and I think it’s one of the better talking animal movies. Especially considering that it has a semirelatable plot, with RJ and the the bear guy, as well as RJ and the forest gang. It’s a very interesting take on an animals perspective on the American Suburbs. The humor still holds up for me to this day (especially the animated feature Hammy’s Boomerang Adventure, that one’ a hoot), which is very impressive. It looks decent enough, has interesting characters and subplots with said characters, and is a good movie overall for kids and adults alike. The score (with terrific vocals from Ben Folds) fits the movie extremely well, and has some genuinely good songs in there too. The ‘Rockin The Suburbs’ remix at the end is always a good one.
Also, it was pretty much the movie I watched weekly when I was between the ages of 4 and 6, so it basically shaped my childhood. No hard feelings though, still a good video!
Also, the number of essays on this damn movie in this comments section is insane.
Steve Carell really enhances everything he's in.
I hate that I noticed the name mistake so quickly. I haven't seen it in years. How did I remember his name was RJ? I don't remember any of the other characters' names...well, I remember Heather, for some reason. That's it, though.
Alright, haven't watched the video yet. Time to test my memory...
RJ, Vincent, Vern, Hammy, Stella, Tiger, Lou, Bucky, Quillo, Spike, The Verminator...
…Two minutes, stalled. I know I'm missing Heather's dad, the mother porcupine, and the president of the homeowner's association. :/
I remember because of the bear saying RJ, had a nice voice
"I already know everything there is to know about shar-"
.... Okay. Well then. I'll take my shark facts elsewhere!
I'm curious to hear big joel's opinion of flushed away. I remember liking it but idk if it holds up
I loved flushed away lol. nice adventure. Slugs were cute.
@@eartianwerewolf So much that. Flushed away was one of my favourite movies and if he hates it I'm going to hate him.
Good movie
it's better than most other 2000s dreamworks movies, that's for sure
It definitely holds up
The most notable thing about this movie for me is that it solidified my hatred for the ‘liar revealed’ plot line, and from that point on plots that used the ‘end of second act low point’ variations soured my opinion of the work as a whole. I just don’t like it
A movie like "Flushed Away" or "Chicken Run" might cheer you up.
It was Open Season that did that for me.
I mostly don't like it because it gives me serious second hand embarassment and anxiety when everything is revealed. Dunno why.
+ Matt I.
Yeah, I get that too. I think it comes from being more empathetic towards fictitious characters than I likely ought to be.
Kelly Knaak The Force Awakens used that same exact subplot but actually cleared it up before the end of the second act without it dragging.
I didn't know Stanley Kubrick is a millennial RUclipsr.
It's kind of creepy how much you look like really young pictures of Stanley Kubrick.
Huh. I always think he looks like a bearded Frodo Baggins.
Come to think of it, have we ever seen Stanley Kubrick and Big Joel in the same room at the same time? My money is on Kubrick turning into a star child after he died, reincarnating as Big Joel.
@Big Joel your job is now to complete Napoleon
@@tarvoc746 You never see Kubrick and Frodo together...
@@ernststravoblofeld You never see Frodo, Kubrick and Big Joel together...
Saw him Oof lol
Big Joel is the Stefan Molyneux For Good
Jack Saint / LackingSaint How?
@Novi a stupid right winger
@Novi alt right white supremacist human trash who posts garbage takes on Twitter
to be fair you have to have a very high iq to understand stefan molynМы начинаем наше космическое путешествие в те времена, когда трава была зеленее и музыка прекраснее, когда еще не было плохой музыки, дабы вернуть давно утерянную формулу хорошей музыки. Рассекая пространство и время, мы слышим звуки божественной музыки, в которой каждая нота находится на своем месте. Кажется нечто подобное испытывают люди когда слушают альбомы Sigur Ros, некое блаженное чувтсво. Это состояние невозможно описать, трудно уловить и легко потерять, но удивительно, на всем протяжении нашего путешествия оно все усиливается и усиливается. В окне иллюминатора пролетают все самые значимые музыкальные и исторические вехи в истории. Важна уже не конечная точка прибытия, а само путешествие, потому что стремление - вот самое главное в нашей жизни, достигнув определенной точки нам обязательно захочется продолжить путешествие дальше. Честно говоря я уже не знаю где мы находимся, достигли мы того самого места? И где это место? Скорее всего мы улетели намного дальше, за пределы пространства времени. Неужели мы так и не нашли формулы? неужели все напрасно? Наше путешествие - вот та самая формула, точнее одна из ее композиций, собранная из обрывков воспоминаний. Вычислить ее невозможно, но нам крупно повезло и мы стали редкими счастливчиками которым открылась одна из идеальных музыкальных композиций. Сможем ли мы когда-нибудь повторить это путешествие… возможно не скоро, но когда-нибудь обязательно, а пока нужно вернуться на землю и передать человечеству данные собранные нашими датчиками. Мы не настолько умны чтобы из полученных данных вычислить формулу, но зато у нас появилась одна из композиций сгенерированных этой идеальной фор
@The Ashes of Ann Frank very credible and not at all revealing username saying Real Facts here
The soundtrack is the best part of the movie imo
Yeah, Ben folds is pretty terrific
tbh when i think of this movie the memories dredged up involve easy cheese spray and disgust
mist And that is why the movie is so awesome!
I'm 13 minutes into the video and I'm not hearing anything about the miraculous fact that Bruce Willis isn't sleep-walking his way through another performance. He actually does really good here.
Hammy: Wanna see my nuts?
RJ: Tempting
When we say 'humpty dumpty sat on a wall' what *is* the wall? What exactly does it do? 1. It separates humpty dumpty from the ground 2. It set him up for the great fall he take in a later line 3. As a boundary, It shows that humpty dumpty chooses to belong to neither world on either side of the wall, and the great fall shows how precarious his position is on the boundary between these two worlds.
This shows the major flaw in this nursery rhyme: humpty dumpty finds himself not belonging to the communities he's surrounded by, always riding the border, and this is presented as a bad thing
At the same time, as soon as humpty dumpty leaves this precarious position, he is met with disaster, and 'all the kings horses and all the kings men', the inhabitants of this some of the border, have no way of dissolving this disaster. For humpty dumpty, to ride the border is dangerous, and to leave is death; where is there for our hero to go at this point? We can never find out because story seems to just end abruptly with no resolution.
My interest in humpty dumpty began before my formal interest in nursery rhymes, I alsdfjr dk$($[#*#*@*#*$$&%*%*$>$*
In conclusion, this nursury rhyme is garbage. Thank you for reading my review
1. Read Hans Peter Duerr's book "Dreamtime".
2. Watch this video again.
3. Reread porteal's comment.
4. ???
5. Chips!
Leftist media analysis in a nutshell.
@@DCT-tt8ib lol as if ben shapiro doesnt do this on the regular
@@kdovy-pb4db Way, way, waaay too coherent for Ben Shapiro. He'd be more like "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, and then fell off and broke. This story teaches kids that it's okay to injure men!"
I think you mean “Peak Cinema”
Cos this movie's a cinematic masterpiece and I will fight anyone who says otherwise
otherwise
Otherwise
Otherwise
Doing the Big Fart
I love over the hedge fight me
can i join?
Enters Attack mode while being in research mode('x33alpha')
I got your back
Big agree. Even the soundtrack is amazing. Ben Folds fuckin slaps.
@@Jon96101 yeah the music is great! I rlly like the intro song, I think it's called "family of me"
I just realized that the only time I think I ever saw this movie as a kid was in clips at my orthodontist. They had TVs installed above each chair so you could watch a movie while they did whatever procedure. I had lots of pretty major dental work as a kid, so I realize that means i pretty much only remember ever seeing this movie while blitzed on laughing gas and valium. Thank you for returning this memory to me.
18:46
What I like is that you specifically mistakenly said porcupine. Could've been any animal but you chose porcupine.
There's an alternate universe out there where everything is literally the exact same as ours except for the single difference that you said an animal other than porcupine. This video in that universe is technically more correct, and this comment doesn't exist.
This movie is actually great, though. Joel never watched it seriously enough to not call the raccoon CJ and never let it be itself. It has a great soundtrack and a unique, cartoony comic style that modern CG movies have strayed further and further away from. It knows it's stupid! It's adapted from (rather good) source material made by two ex-Disney comic cartoonists.
I think Joel missed something about the ending and theme. The nuts are a gag. They have the effect of reducing their reliance on the humans, that is, assuming the others even want them seeing as nuts are kind of a squirrel thing. But let's go ahead and grant it. They will eventually run out or get tired of them and will still be kicking over cans and raiding food, but they will be doing it much less because they don't have a production-exploitation quota to meet for a debatably capitalist bear. Yes, civilization is bad. Yes, if they don't engage with it they will starve. The nuts aren't really a cop-out which is why the movie doesn't really end with celebration. Yes, they are quite likely to get developed over at a later date. The resolution says we are like the animals. We are awoken, but ultimately we must engage past our homes with the supermarket and society and work. What we must do instead is to limit our engagement and fit it into our healthy, natural lifestyles. Find a balance between the two extremes. In the credit sequence you can see they still have the magic TV that doesn't need electricity and use it, along with various other things, but it doesn't feel like they have this hole inside saying they need more, more, more, that the humans do. And as someone from a third world country with a very anti-consumerist mother I dig what this movie has to say. It's still a favorite.
I actually know a few people who don't like this movie and it always seemed to me that it was more because what it had to say didn't sit well with them personally. Just a hunch though.
I like this interpretation of the ending
Oh, also, I meant to expand on the fact that there are strong themes of overconsumption. Even at the beginning, RJ tells himself "just take what you need", and it's him doing exactly not this that fucks him over. Why does he think he needs the Spuddies ("enough is never enough")? Because he doesn't have family, he's seeking value in the material and he will never find satisfaction if he knows there is something out there that he doesn't have. Vincent's villain speech is legitimately super well done, he's holding the fucking Spuddies while he tells RJ that all he needs is food. You think it's just a running gag, "oh, that's just the movie coming full circle" But no, he's holding the product that is literally taglined "enough is never enough", WHILE HE TELLS RJ HOW GOOD IT IS TO HAVE EVERYTHING YOU WANT. AND WHAT HAPPENS IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT? RJ LEAVES HIM ALONE WITH THE SPUDDIES.
That's not even the only thing. The whole plot with getting Vincent a shit ton of food is what I meant by why he's kind of a capitalist. That's way more food than he needs as evidenced by the fact hibernation was ending and he still had the entire family fun size whatever fuck. So we have a plot set up that entails Vincent wanting all this shit he doesn't need and having someone who promises to get it for him. Behind the scenes, RJ uses exploitative labor to meet the deadline so he doesn't fucking die. Vincent doesn't even know what methods RJ uses, it could be fucking magic as far as he's concerned, and moreover, the only extent to which he cares is gratification in seeing someone else turn out like him when he sees the fallout. It's Vincent's greed that causes the cast to suffer, when otherwise, they either a) would have somehow adapted without going over the hedge at all, or b) would have learned how to raid trash without RJ (although it was probably better in the long run that he showed up). This movie is literally high art and I hope your asshole explodes if you think otherwise. Mic drop.
@@oldman6688
so "greed bad"?
hot take
@@Liliputian07 Well yes, but OTH is actually STILL edgy because of where it sees greed in every day life and not just as something people who eat gold and cartoon villains do.
@@oldman6688
so this has never been done before in the whole of childrens' storytelling?
I just came to the comments to see dozens of people say “sharks are also a kind of fish btw” and I’m disappointed in all of you
Jake Beardsley
Fish are also a kind of shark btw
Robin Swede I already knew that, I am a fish doctor™
Well... he did make the mock preemptively angry comment “please don’t make comments that sharks are a kind of fish”...
Could having a different ending save this movie? How would you rewrite it?
Something I realised whilst watching this is that it has a similar premise to Pom Poko where a small group of surviving animals have to eek out an existence in the face urbanisation. Pom Poko has a much more interesting and nuanced ending where the failure of the tanuki to preserve their forest due to the expansion of Tokyo leads them to take a couple strategies. They either disguise themselves as humans (tanuki in Japanese mythology were thought to be shapeshifters in case people weren't aware), or just live as animals on the streets of Tokyo/the few naturally preserved areas that humans have conserved as they've become conscious of the environmental and ecological cost to their urbanisation.
Remove the bear. RJ, a suburban raccoon desperate for food, sneaks through the imposing hedge he'd been conditioned to avoid, and finds the motherlode - a huge log filled with nuts, berries, and enough food to last him all year round. Before he can pig out, however, he's discovered by Vern, and in his attempts to get out of trouble RJ accidentally destroys the log, losing all of the forest's food a week before hibernation. With the entire forest now pissed at him, RJ gives them an offer in exchange for his life: teaching them how to steal food from the human civilization over the hedge. The plot is now far less muddled, and with the added bonus of no bullshit liar revealed plotline.
They find somewhere else to live. I know this is a cop-out, but i think it's still better than the original.
If this movie was harsher and stuck more to real consequences, this film could have more meaning. Have someone say at the end "But what about next winter?" and then end the film by slowly going up and showing how small the preserve is to the town.
You can't. The ending is not the problem: The earlier parts of the movie set it up so it could not really end any other way. Not if you are confined to the happy endings required of a children's film, anyway.
“Doing a big fart” - Big Joel
*Doing *the* big fart.
Over the Hedge is so ridiculously underrated it’s crazy
I understand what youre saying but i really dont think this is about becomming like the humans. Its about family and fraternity, the humans are only objects that create the conflict needed for that theme. I dont agree that this film goes for the same thing as shrek and shark tale
It seems like they overwhelmingly want the film to be one kind of tale, and then when it doesn't fit in that box they act confused. "huh, this is broken and weird, it doesn't do what I want it to do".
@@dakat5131 or could it be that the text can be discussed and shown to be contradictory. Parochialism is bad. Don't believe in death of the author though.
Then what would the point be of humans acting as antagonists? If the humans literally pinned the animals in together, wouldn't that be regarded as a good thing? Why would 2/3 of the antagonists be human, and why would the hedge create nothing but problems?
(Am I replying a year late to a comment about Over the Hedge discourse? Yes. Yes, I am.)
the Over the Hedge gamecube game is far better than the film
I thought I liked the movie because the game had completely overwritten the movie in my memory. Turns out I just liked the game.
Ever play the DS game? It's probably my favorite movie tie-in game ever. (there was a second DS game, but it wasn't the same concept - the good one is just "Over The Hedge")
It's not particularly polished but the over-the-shoulder third person stealth with small animals sneaking through houses and getting around traps and patrolling humans/pets is the most unique take on a movie's core concepts I've seen in a tie-in game. They actually seemed to care about doing something new and different, and while I wouldn't really call it a great game today, I think it's still interesting enough to warrant picking it up if you happen to find it cheap.
Dude. I think you're thinking too hard about the hedge.
When RJ shows them the map where their territory is, it literally says "For future development" it wasn't put there to keep animals out. It was so that the home owners could look at a clean cut hedge instead of a random cluster of trees untill they put more houses there.
My thoughts exactly
He never said it was to keep the animals out. It was to create a conceptual division or at least reinforce one.
I like to think the "future development" is simply a hint that the animals are simply putting off the inevitable. Even though its implied by the Verminator's posture that he is a malignant force that will kill them instead of taking them to another habitat. Even if he and the bitch that caused their troubles over the events of the film are gone, the underlying doom is still approaching, and that is being consumed by consumerism. The Hedge may not necessarily be a boundary, yet more of a manifestation of the expansion. A towering, faceless entity that will end the new status quo the animals find themselves in.
I'm certain the ultimate message left is we need to give up individualism because what's more important is having a family to brave the new world/ultimate doom. There is perhaps nothing scarier than succumbing to the inevitable end alone with nothing fullfilled from being alone.
I know a certain giant crab that wouldn't like to hear this....
"Over the Hedge" is my favorite Dreamworks movie! I feel like it's critique of hyperconsumerism and the perils of an ultra- capitalist society is actually not important. The movie is about RJ looking for a family of his own, albeit not being honest about it.
I also saw this movie as a kid but I was familiar with the comic first so I always loved it because it is like an origin story. In the comic strips they obviously found a sort of balance between the natural world and the human world, so the ending of the movie never bothered me.
You look like you've suffered too many dreamwork movies, I salute your sacrifice
but Ben Folds did the soundtrack, and that redeems everything imo
FOR REAL, god damn that man is so good!
This is the comment I was looking for
dreamworks are just a bunch of pseudo furries with $5 drawing tablets
OwO
The movies suck but I'd be pretty impressed if someone could draw over the hedge with a $5 tablet.
Lol
So that's why all the animals in this movie are so thicc!
Well, Disney kind of started it with all their anthro animal characters.
Over the Hedge was based on a comic strip. The name comes because the animals come from over the hedge next next to Suburbia and how they live around and live like humans, because humans are just animals too. The first comic strip ever written is literally about two humans about to engage in... private adult activities, and the animals are literally watching on bleachers outside of their window. It was designed to be a commentary on how humans are animals by putting animals in human positions but also (most of the time) making them seem smarter and funnier than us. The movie just goes against that completely in my opinion and felt like whoever had a hand in making the movie never read the comic at all.
Voyeurism would have made the movie a lot more interesting.
I think _most_ movie adaptions aren't familiar with the source material at all. Supposedly before starting work on the original Jungle Book, Walt Disney held up a copy of the book in front of all his writers and animators and such. He said, "Your first task is to _not_ rēad the story!" and he tossed it in the trash.
As disrespectful to the source material as it seems to be (I say "seems" because I didn't read the comic), I think it's for the better. Just look at how many people love the movie!
Yeah but the buttplug joke was pretty funny.
@Abbiemation
The skunk needs to be disguised as a cat at one point...and for some reason they had to stick a cork in her ass to keep her from being smelly?
Later on in the movie it's implied it rockets out of her ass because she had to spray some enemies
The thing is filled with epic jokes and no amount of analysis will take those away.
remember there is also a lot of over the hedge rule 34 too
Not that much.
This is my favorite kind of video, serious analysis of thoughtless content
It's like dream interpretation
In that case, I highly recommend Nick Robinson's 24 minute masterpiece "The Problem with Mario's Hair". It's in the top percentage of all video essays.
Thank you both for the recommendations I'll check those out!
RJ: **opens Dorito chips**
**MLG INTENSIFIES**
Just delete your account or stop posting shitty useless coments
@@shea2111 ;)
are you ten years old or do you have a time machine?
Friendship RJ
*Bass drop*
you will never be able to comprehend how hard i laughed at "doing the big fart"
To me, the title over the hedge doesn’t actually imply the literal hedge itself in the movie. I think it’s a expression towards what RJ was trying to do, because he went overboard. He didn’t need to steal all of Vincent’s food, he didn’t even need all of it, he just needed one little snack to satisfy himself for the night. But because he couldn’t get the snack because of misfortune, he decided go for all of Vincent’s food, and with that, fails spectacularly. With that, RJ literally went over the hedge with what he needed, therefore driving himself in lingering debt for his actions.
more than anything what strikes me about these movies is that i watched them as a teen and got annoyed by the kids sitting in the audience but now one of those kids grew up and made half hour videos about them.
I got the sense that the animals were going to cross the hedge in time but only enough to live comfortably. They learned to “shear the sheep without skinning it” Basically they reversed the dynamic where the humans are now a resource for them to exploit but they have to be careful not to exhaust that supply.
I'd need to watch that movie again, but I feel the base point you construct it as being about is not what it was going for.
Totally agree on the butt crack joke being awful though. Even when I was a kid that moment always stuck out to me as a shitty joke in an otherwise likeable movie.
I think the major element missing from your analysis is not only that it's bad for animals to act like humans, but that it's bad for humans to act like humans, too. Acting like the humans in this movie do is framed as bad period, no matter who is doing it.
Going over the hedge is bad, because being on the consumerist side of the hedge is bad. Not because it's unnatural for animals or because breaking artificial boundaries is bad. The message still is "be authentic to yourself", and the only reason the artificial boundary isn't broken is because, in this specific situation the movie creates, there is nothing good on the other side of that boundary.
I just realized that the title "Over The Hedge" is a play on the phrase "Over The Edge."
I actually thought this movie was hilarious when it first came out, and with some notable names in the voice acting such as Bruce Willis, Steve Carell, William Shatner and the late Garry Shandling. While the late 2000's was seen as a bit of a dark age for DreamWorks Animation, it did still have its fair share of hidden gems.
This video is top quality trash, I would know!
oh hey, weird seeing you here, I really like your vids!
I feel like he does a decent analysis, but it just kind of doesn't come together at the end.
@@GTA5Player1 - I thought his point was that the movie itself started off with a decent idea, but it kind of doesn't come together as a good film at the end.
This ain’t it. Over the hedge is a masterpiece
I liked it as a kid...I waited months for this video...this saddens me.
I mean, it's not like he made any strong points against the movie, at least in my book.
holy crap, sounds like this movie could also work as a story about drug addiction. even down to the bit about how rj doesnt turn away from going over the hedge until he has a supportive community. and stuff like, turning to drugs because of poverty and the idea of choosing not to go over the hedge anymore even though there is lots to discover there. idk. I really like your idea this just popped into my head. ive been binging your whole channel the last couple days. great stuff! Thank you
sometimes i can't tell if u know or not how silly these videos are but i could watch these for hours
someone had to say it
nO
say what?
That sharks are also just fish?
I am at a New Years party right now, say in the corner watching a big Joel video.
Mate, I love this movie and all this video did is make me love it even more. You're bonkers!
I was today years old when I found out Steve Carell played the squirrel in this movie
I actually LOVE over the hedge, it was one of me and my sisters favorite movies when I was little haha