REVIEWED - OVER THE HEDGE Woodland creatures vs bulldozing developers in a wacky animated comedy that delivers good value for kids, writes Donald Clarke

DREAMWORKS undoubtedly spends many hours and many millions of dollars developing its computer-animated films, but, for all its efforts, the finished products always seem that little bit more utilitarian than the innovative emanations of Pixar. That said, DreamWorks' pictures, though less ambitious than those of John Lassseter's company, are frequently very good fun indeed.

Over the Hedge, a gentle satire on the banalities of suburbia, is the most entertaining film the company has produced without the word Shrek in its title. It has some pretensions to say something, but they never overcome the desire to supply children and their carers with broad lowbrow humour. How could anybody hate a film that hires William Shatner to voice a possum whose efforts at feigning death involve faux-Shakespearian emoting of the hammiest order?

Shatner plays one of a body of woodland animals - skunks, turtles, squirrels - who emerge from hibernation to find that some strange organic structure has sprung up in their forest. Looming like a greener version of the monolith in 2001, this sinister entity is, it transpires, a hedge, beyond which humans are establishing suburbia.

At first the beasts are terrified. But then a racoon with a hidden agenda (there is something of the antihero of Mad Max II about RJ) arrives to explain what processed delights the citizens keep in their fridges. Meticulously planned raids and retaliations by ruthless exterminators follow.

If animations involving anthropomorphic creatures exist on a spectrum that moves from Warner Brothers (wacky, disrespectful) to Disney (cute, moral), then, despite a gooey final encomium to the virtues of family, Over the Hedge is very much in the former Looney Tunes camp. The jokes are sharp and wry and the voice work is uniformly excellent.

Most impressively, the film-makers shun the very obvious opportunities for product placement and grant fictional names to all the chips, cakes and sodas the animals steal from their new neighbours. Mind you, Pringles may, perhaps, not have welcomed their product being associated with overweight, ecological imperialists.

Oh and, yes, since you ask, allegories with the Iraq conflict are, as ever these days, there to be made.