Rockin' the Suburbs...

...just like Quiet Riot did.

I just got back from watching Over the Hedge, which is a good movie (although I expect Cars to kick it's butt because Pixar >> Dreamworks).

Let me start by explaining the title. There were a couple songs sung by Ben Folds during the movie and as soon as I heard the first one, it occurred to me that the song "Rockin' the Suburbs" (which is a stupendously awesome song) had an appropriate title for the movie and I was thinking that a modified version of it might be used during the credits. Sure enough, the credits started rolling and I heard the very familiar tunes of "Rockin' the Suburbs." The lyrics were completely changed and quite sanitized over the original. (One of the refrains in the original was "Y'all don't know what it's like to be male, middle class, and White." If you've never heard this song, you owe it to yourself to do so. IMO, it's Ben Fold's funkiest and best song by far.) The next song in the credits was Ben Folds covering The Clash's "Lost in the Supermarket," which was also quite appropriate.

The movie had a very talented cast of voice actors. Steve Carrell was particularly awesome as an extremely hyper squirrel, which reminded me very much of Hoodwinked. The parallels run much deeper---this squirrel was specifically denied an ultra-caffeinated beverage until the moment of truth in the movie, in which he was specifically given a large can of this beverage to chug so he could go ultra-fast and save the day. (They switched to his perspective and had time stop.)

William Shatner made fun of his own tendency for clip-talking (they showed some of this in the trailer), which I greaty appreciated. (Later on, somebody mentioned Star Trek II. It was just a question of which Star Trek reference would be used...)

Wanda Sykes was very funny as a skunk. (She finds a boyfriend who has no sense of smell.)

The short cartoon before the film had some amusing moments (about an engineer and a blue jay), but it pales in comparison to some of the previous ones.

X-Men III SPOILER ALERT: This is a non sequitar, but I'll mention something briefly about X-Men III here. Since seeing the film, I found out that there was a brief scene after the credits roll in which they make the resurrection of Xavier extremely explicit. I need to remember to stay until the end of the credits for movies like this...