MOVIE REVIEWS: “FURRY VENGEANCE”

Here’s something new — a revenge movie aimed at small children. Something else kinda new — instead of cute, computer generated animals, it uses real ones. (They’re manipulated by computers, too.) No matter. The critics aren’t impressed. Actually, writes Mike Hale in the New York Times, the movie is “unbearable,” although, he hastens to add, “the bear’s performance is pretty good.” Claudia Puig in USA Today seems astounded that the movie is being released by Summit Entertainment, the same company that brought us the The Hurt Locker which won the award for best movie last year. On the other hand, she writes “Furry Vengeance is a slapstick stinker, easily the worst movie of the year.” Lou Lumenick in the New York Post calls it “excruciatingly unfunny” and “incoherently directed.” As for the CGI effects that give the animals human-like expressions, Amy Biancolli in the San Francisco Chronicle comments that the animals “display neither personality nor expressive flair, communicating solely through Scooby-Doo-ish grunts and pictographic thought balloons. No animals were harmed in the making of this film; they were just made to look like badly rendered clip art.” Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail agrees with his fellow critics about the artistic merits of Furry Vengeance. Nevertheless, he adds, “the appeal of this kind of film to audiences between 4 and 8 shouldn’t be underestimated. As we have learned in innumerable movies — from Home Alone to Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel — children deeply enjoy watching grown-ups getting smacked, tripped and splattered with various kinds of slop. When the humiliation is carried out by small furry animals, the effect is only enhanced.