The Nut Job (2014)

Genre

Adventure | Animation | Comedy

Director

Peter Lepeniotis

Country

Canada | South Korea | USA

Voice Cast

Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Gabriel Iglesias, Jeff Dunham, Liam Neeson, Katherine Heigl, Stephen Lang, Maya Rudolph, Sarah Gadon, James Rankin, Scott Yaphe, Joe Pingue, Annick Obonsawin, Julie Lemieux, Robert Tinkler, James Kee, Scott McCord, Katie Griffin

Storyline

A self serving exiled squirrel (Will Arnett) finds himself helping his former park brethren raid a nut store to survive, that is also the front for a human gang's bank robbery.

Opinion

I love heist films, and  since this one is listed as a heist film on Wikipedia I decided to give it a try, even though people weren't exactly enthusiastic about it. I guess there was a reason for that because "The Nut Job" is a horrible animation flick that will bore you to death.

I wasn't expecting Disney-Pixar or DreamWorks quality, but I can hardly imagine kids enjoying this one. The plot is a confused mess, definitely not complex but extremely hard to follow. The pacing of the story is bloody awful, and leaves you constantly expecting some kind of climax that never really happen.

Other than the tedious, dreadful, unengaging plot, the film also features terrible characters. Utterly unlikable, they are extremely clichéd. There is the cute love interest. The narcissist macho. The sidekick. Oh, and the bad rats. How original.

To add more nonsense, there are completely out of place scenes with the characters dancing to PSY's "Gangnam Style" for no reason whatsoever.

At least the animation is quite good. Sure it isn't spectacular, nor very realistic but is the best part of the film. Even though, to be honest, one would expect a lot better from a 2014 film. It is two-year-old but it looks way older.

What a way to waste money.