Oh, how the moderately successful has fallen. From starring in the highly profitable Mummy series to the critically-praised Crash, Brendan Fraser is now reduced to sharing screen time with a bunch of CGI woodland critters. He’s not the only one taking the plunge. Along with him is Brooke Shields, who plays his wife. Ken Jeong tags along as well, but his career isn’t as notable as theirs. Besides, if his acting career were to fail (which, at this point, doesn’t seem likely), he can always fall back on his medical profession. The rest of the cast doesn’t have much to fall back on.
The story revolves around Dan Sanders (Brendan Fraser), a workaholic push-over who relocates his family (Brooke Shields plays his wife, Tammy and Matt Prokop plays his son, Tyler) to the wilderness to develop a suburban neighborhood for his boss, Neal Lyman (Ken Jeong). The critters that inhabit the land don’t take kindly to their home being destroyed, so they strike back at Dan, causing him pain and mischief. They do this by continually tormenting him, via keeping him up at night and making him miss work due to mishaps, to Rube Goldberg-esque traps, such as launching a boulder at his car (that’s right, the animals attempt homicide. This is definitely for kids).
All of these tactics incorporated by the animals aren’t funny, or even that creative. If anything, they had me scratching my head the whole time. If these animals are so smart that they can create these traps to mess with Dan’s life, then why didn’t they just destroy the construction site in the first place? If they couldn’t do that, they could have easily tormented the workers and tried to scare them away, like they’re doing to Dan. The movie shoots itself in the foot with this glaring predicament.
Another problem that accompanies the animals’ shenanigans is that everybody around Dan doesn’t seem to notice any of it. Take for instance the scene in which a woodpecker keeps Dan up all night by clamorously making a racket. It drives him insane, causing him to wake up his wife. Yet, whenever the woodpecker makes an obscenely loud peck, Tammy doesn’t hear it. I can understand if she were a heavy sleeper (something we never find out). I myself am a heavy sleeper. However, he wakes her up on numerous occasions, which is immediately followed by more loud pecking. How come she doesn’t hear that? I may not hear it when I’m in a deep sleep, but if I’m woken up and hear it as I’m about to fall asleep, I’d hear it clear as day.
Another scene that blatantly portrays this problem is when Dan goes to see a therapist, played by the usually funny Wallace Shawn. During his session, the animals hijack his car, all the while he tries to stay calm and show Dr. Burr that he is not insane. Every time Burr turns around, the car is conveniently out of view. Dan eventually loses it, chasing after the animals, who lock him in the passenger’s side window and drive him into the lake (once again, attempted homicide. Seriously, how is this a kids movie?).
It’s scenes like this that make Furry Vengeance grating. Roger Kumble makes the characters around Dan seem like incompetent morons, while Dan himself isn’t that much smarter. He also has a problem in deciding on who we should be rooting for. In the beginning, you’re told to side with the animals, whose home is being destroyed (I myself found it hard to root for protagonists who attempt to murder their adversaries, especially when they do so in a supposed kids movie). Later on, he seems to make us root for Dan, who is reluctantly doing a job he doesn’t like to provide for his family. He is easier to root for, considering a lot of us can relate to doing a job we don’t like to support our families (or ourselves). However, his job is basically wrongfully destroying one home to create another one. So that gets thrown out the window. Kumble felt the same way, transitioning back into the animals being the protagonists. This becomes frustrating.
Furry Vengeance has no direction. It flip-flops between who the protagonist(s) are, without ever making a final decision. Not only that, but either protagonist(s) aren’t easy to root for, making the film hard to watch. The supporting cast doesn’t help either. Whether it be Brooke Shields acting as if she doesn’t even care about the project (I can’t blame her), Matt Prokop being a whiny teenager or even the usually reliable Ken Jeong hamming it up, they add nothing to the plot but background noise. None of the traps or jokes made me laugh, and nobody in this picture kept me involved. The film isn’t appropriate for children, and it’s not funny for teenagers or adults to enjoy it. The only people this movie benefits are the judges at the Razzies.