Furry Vengeance

How furry is Furry Vengeance

Review
Furry Vengeance is billed as a comedy, but I doubt it'll make you laugh. It might, however, cause you to weep for Brendan Fraser, whose locus of manhood — not to mention his career — takes a beating from vengeful critters.

Water. Coffee. Fangs. Power window. Peaked roof. Leech. You name it: if it's hot, wet, pointy or painful, it lands in Fraser's “no-no zone,” putting this minor, miserable film in a special category of PG movies that routinely mistake crotch hits for humor. Which all-powerful arbiter of filmmaking taste decided this was funny? Perhaps we can blame a screenwriting program that inserts scenes of comic emasculation as a default mode. Or perhaps it's a sadistic hazing ritual for large, mild-mannered action stars.

The rationale behind all the flagrant Fraser humiliation is an uprising of small but vindictive woodland fauna in an undisclosed patch of Oregon — some verdant place that looks like it might be Massachusetts, probably because it is. There a nefarious real estate developer named Neal Lyman (Ken Jeong, putting on that high-pitched screech of his), who schemes to replace acres upon acres of untouched forest with a sprawling mall and McMansions aplenty. Off to the rescue run Mother Nature's four-legged eco-crusaders, a band of disparate species led by a resourceful, diurnal raccoon who makes life heck for on-site Lyman flunky Dan Sanders (Fraser).

The story progresses from bird-crap attacks and stinky skunk shenanigans to a chase scene with bear and undies that concludes, after a fashion, with Fraser dangling from a tree in an upended porta-potty. Only moments before, Dan's unsupportive wife (Brooke Shields) exclaims: “I just don't think this can get any worse.“ Brief pause. “I stand corrected.”

Man versus Beastie may well be an archetype for the ages, but there is no real point watching Furry Vengeance in a world that also contains both Over the Hedge and Caddyshack. The forest denizens, a mix of live-action and slipshod CGI, display neither personality nor expressive flair, communicating solely through Scooby-Doo-ish grunts (“ruh-roh!”) and pictographic thought balloons. No animals were harmed in the making of this film; they were just made to look like badly rendered clip art. (The humans, too. I'd like to believe that Wallace Shawn, playing a clueless shrink in a sweater vest, was pasted into the movie, but I'm afraid he got there of his own volition.)

Roger Kumble directed Furry from a script by Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert, the team behind the crotch hits in Mr. Woodcock. Kumble also helmed College Road Trip, that G-rated Disney number starring Martin Lawrence as a nudgy dad who accompanies his daughter on college visits. Maybe, for his next venture, Kumble could try making a family movie in which the father isn't a blockhead, but for now he's content to squeeze Fraser into an undersized peach tracksuit and train the camera on his gut. And his groin. And his rump — emblazoned with “Yum Yum” in large, looping letters. Read it and weep.