Over the Hedge (film)

After RJ (Bruce Willis), a starving raccoon, fails to get snacks from a vending machine, he becomes so desperate that he tries to raid a large food cache belonging to Vincent (Nick Nolte), a hibernating black bear. However, while trying to finish by stealing a can of "Spuddies" potato chips, he wakes Vincent and loses both the food and the wagon that it is on when a truck runs it over. Hastily, he promises to replace everything by the time Vincent reawakens in a week.

Meanwhile, a group of forest animals, led by Verne (Garry Shandling) the turtle, emerge from hibernation to find their food cache nearly empty. They begin foraging but find a large hedge blocking their way. Verne investigates, discovering a human residential community which confuses and frightens him. RJ, who sees the entire commotion, convinces the other animals it's easier to raid the humans' garbage for food rather than forage for it, and they manage to get enough food to keep them from starving. Verne, however, remains wary, especially after homeowner Gladys Sharp (Allison Janney) discovers the animals in her yard, chases them out through the hedge, and hires VermTech exterminator Dwayne LaFontant (Thomas Haden Church) to keep them out.

Worried for his family's safety, Verne decides to return the food to the humans. RJ tries to stop him, resulting in an argument between the two. This attracts the attention of a playful Rottweiler named Nugent (Brian Stepanek), who chases them across several lawns before all of the food the animals gathered, as well as Gladys's car is destroyed. Verne gets into a fight with RJ and insults the others, causing them to turn against him.

After RJ and Verne reconcile, they discover that Gladys has just restocked her pantry with a large food supply for an upcoming party and concoct a plan to get past the exterminator-planted boobytraps in her yard. Working together under cover of darkness, the animals get the food. RJ and Verne get into another argument, again over a can of "Spuddies", during which Verne and the others learn of RJ's true motives. Gladys wakes up, discovers the animals in her house, and calls VermTech. Dwayne arrives and captures the animals except for RJ, who escapes with the food.

RJ takes the food to a now-awake Vincent, but when the latter points out and praises RJ's treachery, the raccoon decides to sacrifice the food to save his friends. This angers Vincent, who chases RJ as he pursues Dwayne's truck. Verne is happy to see RJ again but the others no longer trust him since he abandoned them. They nearly thwart RJ's efforts to help before Verne finally convinces them otherwise. The animals then subdue Dwayne, hijack his truck, and turn it toward home, but the truck goes out of control and demolishes Gladys' house.

The animals hide in the hedge, trapped by Vincent on one side and Dwayne and Gladys on the other. RJ and Verne get an idea to give Hammy (Steve Carell) the hyperactive squirrel his first ever can of energy drink, which puts him into overdrive. Exceeding the speed of light, Hammy activates an illegal trap that Dwayne had installed (at Gladys' insistence, while warning her that it was illegal in every state except for Texas), capturing Vincent, Dwayne and Gladys and destroying a satellite in the process. Gladys and Vincent are taken into custody by the police and animal control, respectively, while Dwayne tries to escape after taking advantage of Gladys' attempt at fighting a police officer and resisting arrest, only to encounter Nugent.

Back in the forest, Verne tells RJ that if he'd explained what he was trying to do in the first place, the others would have helped because "that's what families do," and welcomes him back to the family. The animals also find that while Hammy was in his caffeine-charged state, he had refilled their food cache with nuts to satisfy them for the year.

Bruce Willis at the film's premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival

• Bruce Willis as RJ, a raccoon who is duplicitous, selfish, a con artist, and extremely intelligent. Despite his hard outer shell, he is revealed to have a sensitive personality, developing feelings of guilt over using his new-found companions to his own ends. Jim Carrey was originally set to voice the character,[5] but in October 2004, he left the project and was replaced with Willis.[6]
• Garry Shandling as Verne, a naturally cynical ornate box turtle, the leader of the foragers. He has his own ways of doing the daily tasks, but his world is turned upside-down when RJ introduces his free-spirited lifestyle into the mix. Though Verne genuinely cares for his family, he can be patronizing. His shell falls off regularly and is laughed at. He is commonly mistaken for an amphibian where he is really a reptile.
• Steve Carell as Hammy, a hyperactive American red squirrel, whose mouth moves as fast as his feet and loves cookies. He is naïve and childish in nature, with an extremely short attention span.
• Wanda Sykes as Stella, a short-tempered, sassy striped skunk with an unhappy love-life and Tiger's love interest.
• Eugene Levy as Lou, a North American porcupine father, Penny's husband, and family patriarch with an overly friendly and optimistic attitude.
• Catherine O'Hara as Penny, the porcupine family mother, Lou's wife, and matriarch; she serves as a ground between their family and the other animals.
• Shane Baumel, Sami Kirkpatrick, and Madison Davenport as Spike, Bucky and Quillo, Lou and Penny's three identical children. They're big on video games and are the most enthusiastic about exploring the world beyond the hedge.

Avril Lavigne at the film's premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival

• William Shatner and Avril Lavigne as Ozzie and Heather, a Virginia opossum father and daughter who see the world from different points of view; Ozzie often embarrasses Heather when he feigns death to get away from danger.
• Omid Djalili as Tiger, a Persian cat; his full Persian name is "Prince Tigerius Mahmoud Shabazz."[7] He falls in love with Stella when she is disguised as a cat.
• Nick Nolte as Vincent, an American black bear; RJ's former friend to whom RJ owes food, motivating the story. He makes a cameo in Bee Movie.[8]
• Allison Janney as Gladys Sharp, president of the Camelot Estates Home Owners Association. She is disgusted by animals and is strict on H.O.A. rules.
• Thomas Haden Church as Dwayne LaFontant,[9][10] an over-zealous human pest exterminator hired by Gladys. He can detect the species of any animal that has recently been in the area by smell. He spoofs the Terminator.
• Brian Stepanek as Nugent, a playful Rottweiler whose only intelligible word is "Play!", other than barking.

Two minor human characters, appearing during the dog chase scene, were voiced by Lee Bienstock and Sean Yazbeck, two participants on The Apprentice 5 as part of a reward for winning a task.[11]

Co-director Karey Kirkpatrick and producer Bonnie Arnold in 2006 promoting the film.

The film was screened as a "work-in-progress" on April 29, 2006, at the Indianapolis International Film Festival,[28] and it premiered on April 30, 2006, in Los Angeles.[1] Nick Nolte, Bruce Willis, Avril Lavigne, Garry Shandling, Wanda Sykes, Catherine O'Hara and Steve Carell attended the premiere.[1] The film was theatrically released in the United States on May 19, 2006.[29] In select New York and Los Angeles theatres, it was accompanied by a DreamWorks Animation's animated short film First Flight.[29] The film was also screened out of competition on May 21, 2006, at the Cannes Film Festival.[30][31]

The soundtrack for the film was released on May 16, 2006 by Epic Records. Rupert Gregson-Williams composed the original score, while Ben Folds contributed three original songs, along with a rewrite of his song "Rockin' the Suburbs" and a cover of The Clash's "Lost in the Supermarket."[35]

Track list:

A video game based on the film was released on May 9, 2006. Developed by Edge of Reality, Beenox and Vicarious Visions it was published by Activision for PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows, Xbox, GameCube, Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance.[36] Three different versions of Over the Hedge: Hammy Goes Nuts! were released by Activision in the fall of 2006: a miniature golf game for Game Boy Advance, an action adventure game for Nintendo DS, and a platform game for PlayStation Portable.[37]

In May 2007, DreamWorks Animation CEO, Jeffrey Katzenberg, said that despite the film exceeding The Wall Street Journal's expectations during the second consecutive quarter of 2007, the film would not get a sequel due to the box office performance of the film, saying "It was close. An almost."[38]

In October 2010, an article was posted on the official Over the Hedge blog, explaining what would happen if a sequel was made, saying that if the sequel didn't perform as well as the first one, then DreamWorks could lose money, and that a sequel probably wouldn't happen until DreamWorks Animation was bought by a large studio, which eventually happened in 2016 when NBCUniversal bought DreamWorks Animation.[39]

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• Official website
• Over the Hedge on IMDb
• Over the Hedge at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• Over the Hedge at AllMovie
• Over the Hedge at Box Office Mojo
• Over the Hedge at Rotten Tomatoes