The Nut Job
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 This movie is just nuts.
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The Nut Job is a 2014 3D computer-animated heist-comedy film directed by Peter Lepeniotis, who also wrote the film with Lorne Cameron. It stars the voices of Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Gabriel Iglesias, Jeff Dunham, Liam Neeson and Katherine Heigl with supporting roles done by Stephen Lang, Maya Rudolph, and Sarah Gadon. The film is based on Lepeniotis's 2005 short-animated film Surly Squirrel. Produced by Gulfstream Pictures, Redrover International and ToonBox Entertainment, it premiered at Los Angeles on January 11, 2014, and was released in the United States and Canada on January 17, 2014, by Open Road Films. With a budget of $42.8 million, it is the most expensive animated film co-produced in South Korea. The film received negative reviews, but was a box office success, grossed $64.3 million in North America for a worldwide total of $120.9 million.
A sequel titled The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature was released on August 11, 2017.
Plot
After he accidentally destroys the winter food supply of his fellow Liberty Park residents, Surly (Will Arnett), a squirrel, is banished to the streets of Oakton. Luckily, Surly finds the town's nut shop and hatches a plan to plunder its bounty. However, unbeknown to Surly and his ragtag team of animal associates, the nut shop is really a front for mobsters who plan to rob the bank next door. While Surly and his team break in to the shop, the mobsters carry out their own scheme.
Bad Qualities
- First and foremost, the film's overall plot is very generic and rather bland. And no, it doesn't do much new or interesting with the concept of a heist film. And the overall idea of this film has already been done much better 8 years before its release with DreamWorks' Over the Hedge, making it a rip-off, even though there was the short film by Peter Lepeniotis.
- Terrible dialogue that is either clichéd catchphrases or unfunny jokes that have no comedic value, for example when Surly says at the end of the film "We're all a little nuts" which comes off as corny and overall cringeworthy at best.
- The characters are either unlikable, annoying, clichéd, obnoxious, or contribute little value to the movie or perhaps even idiotic in the bad way.
- Surly is a very inconsiderate protagonist, as he only thinks about himself and even does this throughout most through the film. As he continuously tries to steal the nuts and have them all for himself, and even ends up blowing up the other animals' tree at one point.
- King's girlfriend, Lana, has no point in this film. All she does is make King blush continuously.
- Redline just screams random quotes, such as "We're all gonna die!" and "No! Not him!"
- When Andie and Grayson are together, they act extremely weird and oddball, which gets really old.
- There are nut puns and toilet humor everywhere. Surly even farts at one point.
- Anachronism: The movie is set in the 1950s, but Gangnam Style, which was written and published in 2012, is performed in the movie by singer Psy (Park Jae-sang) who wasn't even born then.
- Don't forget that the Gangnam Style song is very pointless, pandering and the song was already dated when the movie was released in 2014. As, despite the time between when this movie and the song came out isn't very long, the song still wasn't as groundbreaking or as much of a phenomenon as it was when it was first released (and even then, it was still considered to be outdated).
- The laughably bad end credits, depending on your view. Which have the entire cast dancing to Gangnam Style. A song that has already been used to death in this movie.
- Don't forget that the Gangnam Style song is very pointless, pandering and the song was already dated when the movie was released in 2014. As, despite the time between when this movie and the song came out isn't very long, the song still wasn't as groundbreaking or as much of a phenomenon as it was when it was first released (and even then, it was still considered to be outdated).
- The movie is really mean-spirited, and the only proof is Surly. As he often doesn't show any concern for those around him and only thinks about himself. He even tries to steal the nut cart all for himself at one point.
- It can get fairly dark for a kids movie, such as Surly almost dying from falling off of a waterstream. It isn't helped by the fact that it turned out to be little more than a standard fake-out death, and a very pointless one at it.
- It has an extremely poor grasp of the source material to the original short film.
- The movie is filled to the brim with tons of unnecessary filler moments that are pointless and serve no purpose to the film at all, such as Surly randomly getting kidnapped twice by both the Crooks and Norovirus Raccoon in the exact same scene, which is just lazy writing overall.
- Awkward pacing, as despite being 86 minutes long (the same length as other low budget animated movies), the movie feels very rushed since many of the scenes are usually short and the conflict usually ends abruptly with a few expections, with by those minor scenes actually drag on for quite a while and have no meaning on the plot whatsoever, making the film feel much shorter than it is.
- The film cannot decide what villain it should be for most of the film, before it randomly decides that it's Norovirus Raccoon that's the villain, which become a massive "jump-the-shark" moment. In fact, Surly is more of the main villain than the Crooks and Norovirus Raccoon are since he's such an uncaring jerk that most of the events that he causes are mainly his doing and not for very good reasons.
- Sequel baiting: There is a mid-credits scene in which Norovirus Raccoon and Cardinal are coming up with another plan when he survived from falling off of a water stream while surrounded by sharks, which is supposed to set up the sequel, only except Norovirus Raccoon and Cardinal aren't the villains, but rather the Mayor Percival J. Muldoon while the former was reduced to a cameo in the post-credits scene for the sequel.
- Norovirus Raccoon, while a good villain, has a twist on his character that isn't well-executed since his motives are rather shallow and don't make much sense, and he comes off as too nice at the beginning of the movie for him to be a twist villain, and his reasons for hating Surly are actually quite justified due to his stupidity and horrible nature as a careless jerk who put the animals into immortal danger, making Surly more of the villains and Norovirus Raccoon actually rather sympathetic for his reasoning to nearly kill Surly during the climax.
Good Qualities
- The animation is pretty good, as to be expected from 2010s CGI animated films.
- Great voice acting, especially from Will Arnett as Surly and Liam Nesson.
- Buddy, Andie, Grayson and Precious are likable characters
- A few of the jokes can be occasionally funny at times, like the scene where Knuckles struggles one of the Crooks for annoying him.
- Racoon is a decent villain.
- Decent soundtrack by Paul Intson.
Reception
The Nut Job received generally negative reviews from critics and audiences. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 13%, based on 95 reviews, and an average score of 4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Hampered by an unlikable central character and source material stretched too thin to cover its brief running time, The Nut Job will provoke an allergic reaction in all but the least demanding moviegoers.". On Metacritic, which calculates a normalized rating from reviews, the film has an average weighted score of 37 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a "B" grade, on an A+ to F scale.
Videos
Trivia
- In Surly Squirrel, the original short movie about the rivalry between Raccoon and his followers against Surly and Buddy, Raccoon's team are depicted as the "good" side. In this feature length adaptation, this is reversed.
- Will Arnett and Liam Neeson previously were together in The Lego Movie, a film that came out the same year.
External links
Comments
- 2010s films
- Animated films
- Adventure films
- Independent films
- Box office hits that received negative feedback
- Open Road films
- Gross-out films
- Animal films
- Weinstein films
- Canadian films
- American films
- Foreign films
- Average films
- Mediocre media
- "It's made for kids"
- Mean-spirited films
- Rip-off films
- Comedy films
- Warner Bros. films
- Korean films