THE NUT JOB 2: NUTTY BY NATURE (PG, "MINS) DIRECTED BY CAL BRUNKER
With a seemingly lifetime supply of nuts on tap, things are looking pretty good for Surly the Squirrel (Will Arnett) and his squad.
However, not everyone in the abandoned health food store is happy with this forage-free lifestyle. Andie (Katherine Heigl) worries that, even if their foodstuffs are 100 per cent organic, their lifestyle is unnatural and the group is in danger of losing their animal instincts.
She advocates moving just across the road to their former Liberty Park home, to which Surly responds with a cry of, ‘‘take it easy’’. ‘‘That’s all anybody does around here – and it doesn’t build character,’’ she retorts.
Events, a temperamental furnace and a careless mole conspire against Surly though, and our furry friends find themselves homeless and seeking refuge in the park.
To make matters worse, someone already has designs on the greenspace – Mayor Percival J Muldoon (Bobby Moynihan). Concerned at the blot of ‘‘nothing but grass and trees sitting on prime city real estate’’, he’s plotting to transform it into the Liberty Land amusement park.
Surly and co though have no plans to let that happen without a fight, even if it requires help from an unlikely source.
The battle of wits between humans and the assorted animals provides much of the laughs and most of the best scenes of this amiable but unmemorable animated adventure.
Director Cal Brunker, who made the superior The Son of Bigfoot and inferior Escape From Planet Earth, keeps the pratfalls coming, while also making good use of the in-demand vocal talents of Arnett ( The Lego Batman Movie) and a supporting cast that also includes Maya Rudolph, Peter Stormare and Jackie Chan. The latter’s character is particularly oddball – a martial-arts obsessed mouse who hates it when people call him ‘‘cute’’. Weirdly he also looks and acts almost exactly the same as The Secret Life of Pets‘ scene-stealing bunny Kevin Hart.
That movie feels like a touchstone for Brunker and his two co-writers, with Nutty by Nature striking a very similar anarchic and subversive tone to the Dreamworks tale. Then there’s the similarities to two very popular ‘90s Warner Bros TV shows Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, particularly in the relationship between Surly and his mute pal Buddy.
But, with nods to the likes of
Die Hard 2, a nice line in subverting traditional animation staples and an inexhaustible barrage of carnage and wisecracks, it’s hard not to like this nutty kids movie, even if it contains lines like, ‘‘It’s times like this, I wish I had rabies’’. – James Croot