After waking up from hibernation next to a newly constructed home owner's association, a family of animals ventures Over The Hedge and explores suburbia with the help of a raccoon named RJ. However, RJ is using the family for his own selfish goal of quickly amassing food to pay back a debt. Things get complicated when RJ becomes attached to the family and his debt's due date quickly approaches.
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Message
Over The Hedge has a pro family message. The family of hibernators is composed of various different species who work together to collect food for the winter, and over time they also welcome RJ into their family as one of their own. However, it also proclaims some negative family stereotypes as truth, like families are dysfunctional with bad communication. Additionally, the song and commentary that takes place during the credits is even worse; so you may want to stop the movie before the credits roll.
There's also an underlying message critical of humans, including some subtle digs about humans being bad for animal habitats and humans portrayed as obsessed with food to the point of being wasteful.
Content
Language
There's no swearing in this movie.
Fears
The animals break into a human's house via the pet door. They watch her while she sleeps, distract her pet, steal the food from her fridge and cupboards, and ultimately get spotted when she wakes up. Then the exterminator shows up with a gas mask on and cages the animals. The president of the home owner's association, a stereotypical "Karen", implies she wants the caged animals killed.
There's a bear at the beginning and end of the movie that little children may find scary, especially when he's trying to eat RJ or shows up in RJ's brief nightmare.
The fear of death, typically via the bear or the exterminator, comes up several times through out the movie.
There's no storms, fires, clowns, scary darkness, or strong villains.
Family & Relationships
In several scenes the turtle is without his shell and his butt crack is shown, including one scene where he grabs an object to embarrassingly cover his detail-less crotch. A cork is forcefully inserted into a skunk off-screen. Later the skunk yells "fire in the hole" before explosively stinking up an entire house; afterwards the cork is shown falling down to the ground outside.
The possums play dead several times, and each time someone is briefly fooled thinking they actually died.
In the beginning of the movie RJ was deceptively using the family to gather the food for his debt to the bear. Over the course of the movie he becomes part of the family, and at the end his lies and deception are revealed.
There's no divorce, sneaking out, running away, or bullying.
Other Content
There's no magic in this movie other than the animals talking to each other.
During a montage of RJ describing how much humans love food, a family is briefly shown praying at the dinner table and RJ says "that is the altar where they worship food".
There's a fair amount of cartoon violence where characters get smacked around and are briefly sore afterwards.
Conclusion
Over the Hedge is an enjoyable silly movie with minor positives and minor negatives. Once children are old enough to not be scared of the bear, the biggest concern is ending the movie before the song and commentary during the credits impart negative family messages.
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