Why “Over The Hedge” is one of the greatest conservation movies ever made
Over the Hedge is as a movie as old as I am, at age 16, releasing on May 19, 2006. When I was younger, I had a DVD player in my room, and for a couple of months I watched it nearly every night, sometimes multiple times a night. I’m not sure why I watched it so much, but clearly it had captivated me. And it may have captivated many other children as well. Why? Why was this seemingly generic animated movie, with a load of celebrities shoved in as voice actors to sell tickets, so great? The answer lies in its overall message.
The movie follows a group of forest animals who have awoken from hibernation to discover a large hedge that has cut off their land from a large suburban sprawl. As they venture past the hedge, they discover various dangers to them from the human world. Throughout the movie, the hedge represents the barrier between them and the encroaching urbanization. The movie has a large theme of preserving natural habitats, with this looming hedge representing the fear of them losing their home due to human/urban development, a fear that many animals, while not consciously aware of like the animals are in the movie, face today, with humans expanding into natural areas and destroying habitats/wildlife. Throughout the movie, the animals witness the destruction of trees and forms of pollution caused by human consumption.
The film also touches on over-consumption in the human world, a leading cause of not only destruction of habitats, but climate change. The humans living in this new suburban neighborhood are portrayed as extremely materialistic and wasteful, driven by consumerism and the addiction to consumption. The animals throughout the movie discover various signs of human overindulgence, like discarded food and excess packaging. These signs throughout the movie provide commentary on the dangers and how damaging human over-consumption is, not just in this story but throughout the world in real life.
One scene in the movie has particularly prevalent messages about over-consumption and waste in the human society. The main character, RJ the Raccoon, takes his animal compatriots into “Suburbia” and has explains all of the ways that human society revolves around food, and essentially around consumption as a whole. After his explanation, RJ kicks down some trash cans, and the animals are astonished at the amount of waste and edible food were left in the can, with an overwhelming surplus of edible items that humans had carelessly thrown away. The characters witness the excess and lack of consideration for the value of these resources. The scene not only shows human wastefulness but also portrays the consequences of this wastefulness and over-consumption on the environment as a whole, serving as a powerful visual representation of such themes.
One of the main villains from the movie is also an exterminator, who goes around removing and killing animals who have made their way into the neighborhood from their natural habitat, also highlighting the needless slaughter of animals and use of pesticides which are harmful to the environment.
Over the Hedge is a great movie. It not only works well on its own, but also introduces kids directly to the consequences of environmental overstep by humans by putting them in the shoes of the animals, directly showing from their perspective in a personified manner how human over-consumption affects their ability to survive in their natural environments. Movies like this are very important to be made; not only ones that are genuinely good movies but movies that include a lesson and can actually introduce kids to real world issues in a fun and light-hearted manner.
