The Nut Job

The Nut Job is a American-Canadian-South Korean 2014 3D computer-animated heist-comedy film directed by Peter Lepeniotis (who also wrote the film with Lorne Cameron). It stars the voices of Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Gabriel Iglesias, Jeff Dunham, Liam Neeson and Katherine Heigl with supporting roles done by Stephen Lang, Maya Rudolph, and Sarah Gadon. The film is loosely based on Lepeniotis's 2005 short animated film Surly Squirrel. Produced by Gulfstream Pictures, Redrover International and ToonBox Entertainment, it premiered at Los Angeles on January 11, 2014 and was released in the United States and Canada on January 17, 2014, by Open Road Films. With a budget of $42.8 million, it is the most expensive animated film co-produced in South Korea. The film received negative reviews, but was a box office success, grossed $64.3 million in North America for a worldwide total of $120.9 million.

A sequel titled The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature was released on August 11, 2017.

Plot
After he accidentally destroys the winter food supply of his fellow Liberty Park residents, Surly (Will Arnett), a squirrel, is banished to the streets of Oakton. Luckily, Surly finds the town's nut shop and hatches a plan to plunder its bounty. However, unbeknown to Surly and his ragtag team of animal associates, the nut shop is really a front for mobsters who plan to rob the bank next door. While Surly and his team break in to the shop, the mobsters carry out their own scheme.

Nutty Qualities

 * 1) First and foremost, the film's overall plot is very generic and rather bland. And no, it doesn't do much new or interesting with the concept of a heist film. And the overall idea of this film has already been done much better 8 years before its release with DreamWorks' mh:greatestmovies:Over the Hedge, making it a rip-off, even though there was the short film by Peter Lepeniotis.
 * 2) The characters are either unlikable, annoying, clichéd, obnoxious, or contribute little value to the movie or perhaps even idiotic in the bad way.
 * 3) *Surly is a very inconsiderate protagonist, as he only thinks about himself and even does this throughout most through the film. As he continuously tries to steal the nuts and have them all for himself, and even ends up blowing up the other animals' tree at one point.
 * 4) * King's girlfriend, Lana, has no point in this film. All she does is make King blush continuously.
 * 5) * Redline just screams random quotes, such as "We're All Gonna Die!" and "No! Not Him!"
 * 6) * When Andie and Grayson are together, they act extremely weird and oddball, which gets really old.
 * 7) There are nut puns and toilet humor everywhere. Surly even farts at one point.
 * 8) Anachronism: The movie is set in the 1950s, but Gangnam Style, which was written and published in 2012, is performed in the movie by singer Psy (Park Jae-sang) who wasn't even born then.
 * 9) * Don't forget that the Gangnam Style song is very pointless, pandering and the song was already outdated when the movie was released in  2014 . As, despite the time between when this movie and the song came out isn't very long, the song still wasn't as groundbreaking or as much of a phenomenon as it was when it was first released (and even then, it was still considered to be outdated).
 * 10) ** The laughably bad end credits, depending on your view. Which have the entire cast dancing to Gangnam Style. A song that has already been used to death in this movie.
 * 11) The movie is really mean-spirited, and the only proof is Surly. As he often doesn't show any concern for those around him and only thinks about himself. He even tries to steal the nut cart all for himself at one point.
 * 12) It can get fairly dark for a kids movie, such as Surly almost dying from falling off of a waterstream. It isn't helped by the fact that it turned out to be little more than a standard fake-out death, and a very pointless one at it.
 * 13) Not very faithful to the source material to the original short film.
 * 14) The film cannot decide what villain it should be for most of the film, before it randomly decides that it's Norovirus Raccoon that's the villain, which become a massive "jump-the-shark" moment.
 * 15) Sequel baiting: There is a mid-credits scene in which Norovirus Raccoon and Cardinal are coming up with another plan when he survived from falling off of a waterstream while surrounded by sharks, which is supposed to set up the sequel, only except Norovirus Raccoon and Cardinal aren't the villains, but rather the Mayor Percival J. Muldoon while the former was reduced to a cameo in the post-credits scene for the sequel.

Not So Nutty Qualities

 * 1) The animation is pretty good, as to be expected from 2010s CGI animated films.
 * 2) Great voice-acting, especially from Will Arnett as Surly.
 * 3) Buddy, Andie, Mole and Precious are likable characters
 * 4) Racoon is a decent villain.
 * 5) Decent soundtrack by Paul Intson.

Reception
The Nut Job received generally negative reviews from critics and audiences. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 13%, based on 95 reviews, and an average score of 4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Hampered by an unlikable central character and source material stretched too thin to cover its brief running time, The Nut Job will provoke an allergic reaction in all but the least demanding moviegoers.". On Metacritic, which calculates a normalized rating from reviews, the film has an average weighted score of 37 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a "B" grade, on an A+ to F scale.

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Trivia

 * This movie is loosely based on the original short movie Surly Squirrel.
 * In the aforementioned short, about the rivalry between Raccoon and his followers against Surly and Buddy, Raccoon's team are depicted as the "good" side. In this feature length adaptation, this is reversed.
 * Will Arnett and Liam Neeson previously were together in mh:greatestmovies:The Lego Movie, a film that came out the same year.