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Shatner and Avril Lavigne. What possums do best is playing dead and Ozzie is trying to teach his daughter how to follow in Dads footsteps. But Heather is a teenager with attitude and gets embarrassed by her over dramatic father who loves to throw himself into the role.

Penny and Lou are the porcupines and have a little family. They have a lovely relationship and are voiced by Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy (he was the dad in American Pie).

Vincent He is the bear and a grumpy one at that, but then so would you be if someone just woke you from hibernation when they were stealing all your food! Vincent is the villain of the film and is voiced by Nick Nolte with a great husky deep voice very fitting of a bear. Vincent is a selfish, greedy bear and he tries to tell RJ that you've got to look out for number 1.

Some of the other characters include Tiger the cat played by Omid Djaili (the comedian and actor), Gladys played by Allison Janney (CJ from West Wing) who is the perfectionist human who hates wild animals, Dwayne who is Verminator a man with a passion for gadgets and gizmos to catch wild animals, most of them involving bashing, chopping or lasering the poor things.

My Thoughts
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This film is produced by DreamWorks the company that have produced both the Shrek films (which I love). I therefore settled down to watch this film with great expectations. I have to say though that it is not as good as Shrek. For the adult there are not as many jokes and the characters are not as funny. I think kids will still enjoy it and find it funny though.

The plot is simple and a little predictable in places but it works. For example with Stella the skunk we have a plotline which really is just like the old cartoon with Pepe Le Peu, it's a little predictable but still quite funny.

The characters are good, there is a real mix and the all-star line up really brings them to life. They definitely are a likeable cute bunch of animals and the animation really brings them to life. It is clear when watching the film that the animators have spent more time on the animals than the humans, where as in Shrek the humans are animated just as well as the characters. However this doesn't really distract from the film itself as the animals are the main characters.

There is a definite moral aspect to the film with the importance of family and doing what's right. Here though the family isn't just people that you are related to but close friends no matter how different they are. I guess that part of the film might leave you with a warm glow!

In my opinion it's a good but not great film. It's worth a watch but I don't think I will buy the DVD. Great for kids but maybe not so much for the whole family.

Special Features
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Verm Tech Infomercial A pretend advert for the Verm-Tech Institute with Dwayne the character who is the verminator in the film. Also talks about the different types of animals in the film.

Jingle Burps Most children will probably find this amusing its Hammy the squirrel burping to the song Jingle Bells. Most adults however will probably find this disgusting!

The Tech of Over The Hedge - Interesting feature about how the animation is done and how the characters come to life.

Meet The Cast Probably the most interesting feature on the DVD. Here you get to meet the cast and hear them talking about their characters and see them voicing their characters in the studio. I enjoyed watching this and learnt a lot more about the various characters in the film.

Further Information
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Classification U
DVD Released on 4 Dec 2006
Running Time 80 minutes

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