Publication Date: 03-04-2026

Open Season (2006) review

Dir. Jill Culton and Roger Allers

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

The golden age of Pixar (lasting from 1995 till around 2010) effectively raised all of our expectations for the medium of animation, from both a visual and storytelling perspective. That said, its arguably unprecedented run of critical acclaim ended up cannibalizing a lot of other animated works from various studios. For example, Ilion’s Planet 51 was certainly no Up, but for what it set out to do, it was effective entertainment with a retrofuturism to its style.

This brings me to Open Season, Sony Pictures‘ first foray into animation. While it might not be The Incredibles, or even Cars, released the same year, it’s an affectionately serviceable animated buddy comedy centered around a moose and buck. Its duo has a lot of similarities to other buddy comedies, both animated and live-action. The animation is very good, it’s buoyed by a couple of inspired, kinetic sequences, and elicits a few laugh-out-loud moments. It does its job, and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Boog (voiced by Martin Lawrence) is an overly domesticated grizzly bear, spoiled rotten by a forest ranger (Debra Messing) and de facto mom, who has made him the unofficial mascot of the town of Timberline. Boog puts on shows for townsfolk of all ages before retreating to his cozy garage. Enter Elliot (Ashton Kutcher), a one-antlered deer who is about to be mounted on the wall of a vicious hunter. Boog alters fate by cutting Elliot off the hood of the man’s truck.

Elliot repays Boog by convincing him to break out of his quarters and embrace his bear tendencies, so the two go hard in the paint by gorging themselves on junk food and “Slooshies” at a local convenience store. The final straw for Boog’s owner comes when Elliot inadvertently screws up one of their performances, so she sends her beloved grizzly out to live in the wilderness where he belongs. While Elliot is accustomed to life on the pasture, Boog is witless, so now, the aforementioned hunter (Gary Sinise) doesn’t have to worry about disturbing civilization trying to get another bear or buck on his wall.

Boog and Elliot shares the frosty-yet-accepting dynamic that Shrek and Donkey do. Having Martin Lawrence voice a grizzly bear with the suave, laidback cadence for which he knows coupled with Ashton Kutcher channeling his reckless Punk’d energy was a union ridiculous enough to work. While a lot of predictable cartoon antics occur, Open Season has a sturdy foundation in its effective leading animals.

Because a hunter couldn’t be the singular villain in the story, there’s also Patrick Warburton voicing a much larger deer than Elliot, who also stands in the one-horned goober’s way of getting to talk to his deer-crush (Jane Krakowski). Meanwhile, Boog is just trying to survive, now having to learn how the world is his toilet, skunks aren’t to be trusted, and the animal kingdom is simply predicated on surviving and seeing the next day.

Besides the convenience store, the other singularly great scene in Open Season involves Boog busting a dam, built of course by beavers, who all sit atop a wooden pillar and eat like the blue-collar guys in Lunch atop a Skyscraper. From there, the outskirts of Timberline are flooded in a chaotic yet clear sequence involving the tide swallowing the hunter’s vehicle while Boog and Elliot try to remain afloat. It’s not an especially original scene, but the swath of animators bring it to life with some impressively kinetic shots that seamlessly transition our perspective between being above water and under it. Sony Pictures Animation would undoubtedly have bigger and more notable achievements (their latest film, Goat, is one of their all-time best) but Open Season established them as a very real player in the animated space, both in look and camaraderie.

Voiced by: Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise, Debra Messing, Jon Favreau, Patrick Warburton, and Jane Krakowski. Directed by: Jill Culton and Roger Allers.