Gone Nutty (2002)

Just perfect...

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

GONE NUTTY stars the cute little mouse-like thing from ICE AGE and consists of the many funny and painful things this guy does to try to break open this acorn. Clever writing take a very simple idea and milk the very most from it.How can anyone NOT like this cute little short that accompanied the release of ICE AGE?! This Fox short is amazingly good and quite comparable to products coming from Pixar and Dreamworks--in fact, I think it was much more enjoyable than the competition for the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film from Pixar (BOUNDIN')--mostly because although BOUNDIN' was well animated, the story itself wasn't great. And that is where GONE NUTTY really excels. I remember the first time I saw it in the theater--lots of people were laughing out loud and that should be a good reason for considering this film for the Oscar. While it did lose to the very imaginative and weird HARVIE KRUMPET, the makers of this film have nothing to complain about--GONE NUTTY was a lovely short as was KRUMPET. Both are well worth your time.

Despite his struggles in the film Ice Age, Scrat has managed to fill a hollow tree with his precious nuts. Ever the hoarder, Scrat tries to squeeze another nut into the tree but his greed soon becomes his undoing.Scrat was the focus of the trailer I saw for this movie, and was a really good little running joke all the way through the film, so to have his own short was both a risk (can he do it himself) and a benefit (his stuff was funny!). Happily the plot simply sees an extension of his Ice Age role of chasing nuts etc. Here the action is expanded and is actually pretty funny.The short running time is just right as the one basic joke can't be told repeatedly over a longer time without fatigue setting in. As it is, the film just manages to do enough stuff with the nuts to keep it funny without wearing out it's welcome. The final punchline is a real exaggeration but is also very funny!Overall I doubt this will stand up to repeated viewings (unless you're one of the toddlers I watched it with), but it is still a funny addition to the film.

The first time we met the character Scrat was in the trailer of 'Ice Age'. In that film he was one of my favorite characters and here he returns for 'Gone Nutty', a hilarious animated short. Scrat is collecting acorns but the last one keeps popping out of the stash he has already collected. We understand that Scrat will get in some trouble. Although the main event is predictable, the way the short plays from there is very original.The trailer for 'Ice Age' seemed a animated short on itself as well; it was very funny. 'Ice Age' was also very funny and 'Gone Nutty' continues on the same funny level. I laughed a lot during this little film and while doing that I was also admiring the beautiful animation. One of the best animated shorts I have seen and finally one that is not made by Pixar Animation Studios.

Like many of it's animated colleagues, Ice Age starts off with a wonderful short film, this time one which was even better known than the rest of the film before it was released. You may remember seeing previews for Ice Age that were made up entirely of footage from Scrat's Missing Adventure, which is probably the most entertaining and amusing short animated film I've ever seen. There is something to be said when a movie like Drop Zone or even a James Bond film like Moonraker can so badly screw up the concept of skydiving, and then a short children's film like this makes the effort to portray it so accurately (with the obvious exception of all that nut gathering business, of course).I have heard that Scrat was originally meant to play a much larger role in the film, which was to be centered around him as the main character, but other characters were brought in under the demand for a more large scale motion picture. Thankfully, Scrat makes several much-welcome appearances throughout the film, but this opening sequence still stands as probably the best four minutes of the entire film.