Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		1.0

Furry Vengeance Blu-ray Movie Review

About as much fun as being mauled by a she-bear.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater August 25, 2010

If you love films about cuddly forest creatures who have been given anthropomorphized human expressions in post-production—I know, how adorable!—well, you won’t anymore after watching Furry Vengeance. This is a movie that could make a diehard vegan rip the head off a rabbit in anger. And yet, the CGI-assisted animals in this miserable excuse for a family film are far from the worst thing about it. I can tolerate the attempt to make a kind of live action cartoon out of woodland mammals—it’s overly cutesy, but hey, this is a kid’s movie—but what I can’t stand is Furry Vengeance’s soulless, mean-spirited, unbelievably stupid script, its repetitive and painfully unfunny slapstick “comedy,” and its ill-conceived endeavor to inject this excrement with a “green,” environmental message. The only way Furry Vengeance contributed to saving the planet was by sucking so hard that no one polluted the atmosphere by driving to the Cineplex to see it.

Product placement. Ka-ching!

I almost don’t know where to begin. If I see a worse film than Furry Vengeance this year I just might just retire, quit, throw in the towel. And I mean kill myself. Okay, okay, that’s hyperbole. But really, this movie is bad, not so bad it’s good, but so bad it makes me lament humanity, in general, and Hollywood, in particular. If you can make it to the end without being reduced to a depressed, dead-eyed husk of your former self, then you’re either non-sentient or a six-year-old. And that’s the saddest part. Kids will probably like Furry Vengeance, if only for its Home Alone-meets-Over the Hedge antics. Brendan Fraser is repeatedly bashed in the nutsack. A raccoon pisses in his face. A flock of birds goes on a strafing run, machinegunning runny white gobs of waste at the forest-demolishing antagonists below. It’s joyless slapstick and just about every gag is repeated at least twice, in case you went for a pee break and missed it the first time around.

The story, weirdly enough, seems like a thinly veiled allegory for the so-called war on terror. One trick comedic pony Ken Jeong plays real estate tycoon Neal Lyman (yes, a lie man), who plans on razing the woods to build a massive housing development with an accompanying “forest themed” shopping mall. Think of him as George W. Bush, invading Iraq and Afghanistan to democratize and westernize. Lyman’s head of operations is Dan Sanders (Brendan Fraser)—taking on a kind of General Patraeus role—who has moved into a model house in the forest with his wife (Brooke Shields) and petulant teenaged son (Matt Prokop). The woodland creatures—they’re the insurgents in this fable, led by a raccoon version of Osama bin Laden—get wind of what’s going to happen to their beloved home and mount organized strikes on Sanders, who, against his conscience and better judgment, ordered a beaver dam to be blown up with dynamite. The animal attackers are basically eco-terrorists, and they’ve even got a Rube Goldberg-style device that rolls boulders at company cars—the woodsy equivalent of an IED. To belabor the allegory—and I’m not making this up—Lyman orders the construction of a Guantanamo-type prison, where the “insurgents” are kept in cages. Frankly, it’s ridiculous, and it all plays out exactly like you’d expect. Lyman gets his comeuppance, Sanders learns that destroying the forest is a big no-no, and the animals save their homeland from destruction.

So, Furry Vengeance appears to consciously support—and even encourage—terrorism, ideological, environmental, or otherwise. In the movie, it’s apparently okay for the animals to murder—the first project manager, played by The Daily Show’s Rob Riggle, is pushed to his death off a cliff—if it means saving their habitat. Okay. The mantra of Participant Media—who co-funded Furry Vengeance, An Inconvenient Truth, The Cove, and a number of other Big Issue films—is “Entertainment that Inspires and Compels Social Change.” Now, I’m all for saving the environment, but isn’t it a bit much to make a movie that teaches kids that it’s plum and dandy, essentially, to be an eco-terrorist? Beyond the fact that Furry Vengeance is so didactically in-your-face, it’s an utter failure as a comedy as well. I feel bad for Brendan Fraser, I really do. He goes all out here—flailing and pratfalling, getting kicked in the nuts, bathing in tomato sauce, and wrestling with stuffed animals—but these hare-brained gags go beyond cringe-worthy and into the realm of the truly awful. Worse, Ken Jeong occasionally resorts to talking in high-pitched, vaguely “Asian” gibberish that comes off as completely insensitive, if not outright racist. By the time the film started making fun of an elderly woman with dementia, I’d long since had enough. Forget vengeance, this if furry torture.

Furry Vengeance Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Furry Vengeance may be utterly irredeemable as a film, but, and this is some small comfort, it looks strong on Blu-ray, with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's bright, tight, and colorful. The movie was shot using the RED digital HD video camera, which is capable of producing a very natural, film-like image. The CGI stands out as patently artificial, especially during the film's climax, but clarity is excellent throughout and you'll be able to easily notice facial texture, clothing detail, and even the individual hairs on the animals. Color too is good, with bold primaries and balanced skin tones. Black levels can be a bit hazy during the nighttime scenes, but at least the image has a very low noise threshold. Furry Vengeance looks good, but as they say, you can't polish a turd.

Furry Vengeance Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Likewise, the film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is clean and active, reveling in its kid movie sonic craziness. The rear speakers get a lot of play as the insanity (and inanity) unfolds, from outdoorsy ambience, like wind and bird calls, to more noticeable effects making brisk cross-channel movements. There's not much subtlety here, but hey, is anything about Furry Vengeance subtle? The score is predictably dippy, using a mix of all-too-obvious pop tunes, including a terrible rendition of "Insane in the Membrane," but the music has ample presences, with defined bass, high end clarity, and nice separation between channels. Dialogue, as wooden as it is, is easily understandable, and English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available in clean white lettering.

Furry Vengeance Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Audio Commentary with Director and Cast
Under no circumstances can I recommend watching Furry Vengeance a second time. Skip this track with director Roger Kumble and actors Brooke Shields and Brendan Fraser.

Deleted Scenes (1080p, 6:11)
Four excised scenes, with optional commentary by director Roger Kumble.

The Pitfalls of Pratfalls (1080p, 9:57)
"When in doubt, smash into something," says Brendan Fraser, articulating the film's dubious comedic philosophy in this slapstick-centric featurette.

Working with Animals: A Profile of Ken Beggs (1080p, 8:42)
A look at how wrangler Ken Beggs orchestrated the actions of the film's animal characters.

Gag Reel (1080p, 3:54)

Furry Vengeance Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

What more can I say except, bar none, this is the worst movie I've seen this year. Maybe in the past five years. It's that awful. If you're thinking of buying this for a kid, don't. Kids deserve better than this, and they're smarter than this. Furry Vengeance is an insult to anyone with a cerebral cortex.