Based on the opening scene, I thought I was going to love this cool, amusing, self-aware animated flick. Alas, I struggled with a lot of it and wound up feeling kind of lukewarm by the end. And that’s despite a very game cast and a lot of cool nods to live action heist movies.

The flick is about a crew of anthropomorphic animal crooks who pull off heists in an otherwise mostly human city (probably shouldn’t ask questions about the logic). The team is lead by a wolf… who is bad because the wolf is always bad in the storybooks. He’s joined by a shark, a piranha, a snake, and a tarantula.

And the voice cast and acting is a lot of fun, the animation is neat, the character models cool… it’s just that the heist and the story in general are pretty average. Maybe it’s dumbed down for kids, but the heist doesn’t snap and crackle like the dialog sometimes can. It felt lazy and had too many moving parts for having no surprises or creativity at all.

Probably am asking too much of a kids flick… but it’s disappointing since all the ingredients were there. They just needed to put more effort into being an actual caper.

The flick kept reminding me of Zootopia… and how that was a good flick for kids and grump-ass adults.

I suspect I’m wrong about this one based on the solid reviews from others. Maybe I was a little too uptight or expected too much. And yet I walked in knowing nothing about the film and was immediately charmed by the opening scenes. So maybe my disappointment is just that they didn’t live up to the promise of the first five minutes.

Score: 72