Over the Orca

Recently I watched two films on DVD which have some sentimental connection, but are otherwise independent of each other. 

Over the Hedge.  This is a 2006 animated film.   In August ’06, I was in Bucharest, Romania, visiting a particularly attractive, sexy, but also very difficult woman, Gia.   Apparently she had a Romanian boyfriend I soon learned about – in addition to her Dutch husband living in Holland AND a French lover she’d been living with in Bucharest while married to the Dutch guy but who had recently returned to France - a seriously complicated social life.  This Romanian guy, Adrian, was married, but for whatever reason could not leave his wife for Gia.  However, apparently he had promised her that if she left me, he would leave his wife and marry her.  So despite my coming across the globe and renting an apartment in downtown Bucharest, she moved out (back in with her sister, who lived nearby) to placate Adrian, thereby giving me considerable free time to kill before returning the US and never returning to Romania again, for Gia or for anyone else.   This movie was playing in the local theater, so I went to see it.

Bruce Willis plays RJ, a devious raccoon who managed to destroy the entire winter stash of junk food accumulated by a particularly nasty bear, Vincent (voiced by Nick Nolte).  In exchange for Vincent sparing his life, RJ agrees to replenish the stash.  To do so, he needs to persuade an unwitting group of forest animals to cross a hedge into a residential neighborhood and steal the food from the kitchen of the subdivision’s nastiest woman, the HOA president (voiced by Allison Janey).  She’s assisted by the local exterminator, voiced by Thomas Hayden Church, best known from “Wings”.  The animals include a hyperactive squirrel, Hammy (Steve Carrell), an anal-retentive and risk-averse turtle (Gary Schandling), a porcupine couple (Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, obviously teaming up for the first time ever), and an impressively overacting opossum (William Shatner) and his daughter (Avril Lavigne). 

Needless to say, stuff happens.  Some of it is funny.  It’s worth watching once.   Since the film was fairly recent (11 years ago) I remembered most of it, but not really so much in terms of the Romanian angle – which is probably more interesting than this film.  Anyhow.

Orca the Killer Whale.  This movie came out in 1977.  We saw it once, and once only, and the only time we (our family, or for that matter, I) ever saw a movie at a drive-in movie theater.   That theater was on 355, Rockville Pike, just north of the Montgomery County (Maryland) courthouse complex.  It’s now long gone, as is the Volvo dealer and the Hechingers which used to be close by as well.

Richard Harris – oldsters will remember him as King Arthur in “Camelot”, younger viewers may recall his last role as Dumbledore in the earlier “Harry Potter” films – plays a whaling captain in Newfoundland, Canada, though originally from Ireland.   He managed to kill a pregnant female killer whale and its baby, enraging a male killer whale, presumably the father/husband/boyfriend/male life partner.  This MKW embarked on an elaborate campaign, showing sufficient intelligence to support this entire movie and its implausible and tiresome plot.  

First the whale caused major trouble in the little fishing village in Newfoundland where the Captain sought refuge.  Jaws eats a helicopter?  MKW: "Hold my beer".  This whale manages to destroy the fuel depot for the village, resulting in a huge night time explosion.  Yeah.  And he almost kills Bo Derek by knocking out the supports of a house stilted over the harbor.  Finally the now-unpopular Captain realizes he has to bring the dispute out onto the high seas, and there the MKW leads him and his crew all the way to the Arctic for a final showdown.  

Incidentally, the primary female character (Charlotte Rampling) is a fairly arrogant marine biologist who treats Captain with contempt: “you fishermen are cluelessly screwing with the ecosystem”, all that nonsense.  Eventually even she becomes horrified by the whale’s behavior.  But both her and the Captain realize that apologizing to the whale is not an option.

I won’t spoil anything, but suffice to say a resolution is achieved.  Will it satisfy anyone?  Only so far as the movie finally ends.   Enough.  Other notable co-stars are Bo “10” Derek (fully clothed, sorry), and Will Sampson, better known as Big Chief in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.