The Nut Job (2014) Directed by Peter Lepeniotis

With new big, computer animated, movies coming out every few other weeks or so, it's of course only a matter of time before the genre starts to turn into a tiresome one, with movies that all start to feel and look alike, of which none are doing anything new or surprising anymore. And yes, this animated movie is an extremely formulaic and mediocre one as well, that only barely entertains.

Sorry but a movie in which the main plot is about a couple of squirrels looking for nuts isn't all that appealing or fun sounding to me anyway. And indeed, the story also works out as hardly anything engaging, interesting or fun enough to watch. Sure, there are plenty of side-plots as well but that's just what they are; side-plots. It seems that some of the side-plots were interesting and more fun ones to follow but the movie unfortunately sticks mostly to its main story, which isn't even told that very well any way.

There isn't ever really a good flow to the story but that may be well due to the fact that the movie is an extremely predictable one, from start to finish, with anything that it ever does. You just keep waiting for things to finally develop into anything truly fun and creative but it just keeps building up and building up toward something that just never comes. Everything about the movie feels underdeveloped, which includes the story, all of the characters and even the animations themselves.

It's a rather 'cheap' looking animated movie really, in which nothing looks realistic or very detailed. Seriously, I really believe that the only reason why this movie ever had a theatrical run was because of the involvement of some well known, big name, actors who provided the voices for some of the most important characters of the movie. Otherwise, it's really nothing but a cheap looking and feeling, formulaic, animated movie, that should have gone straight-to-DVD or TV instead.

The movie is also definitely lacking some good comedy in it. Again, it's all too simplistic and predictable and mostly relies onto characters crashing into stuff and falling down from something. There are even more than a few fart and burp jokes in this movie, which should tell you something about its 'comedy'.

Another big problem I had with this movie was that all of the characters looked alike to me. Really, I couldn't tell most of them apart from each other, just because of the simple fact that they all looked alike. There is a good reason why most animators normally work on just one character when doing a movie like this.

And in case you are wondering why there are so many gangnam style jokes and references in this movie; it's because it's a South Korean co-production. But it's all stupid really and stuff like this also always ensures that the movie is already going to be outdated, in only just a couple of years from now.

There are clearly better, more fun and original animated movies that you can watch.

5/10

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