When animals seek revenge

“The more we take, the less we become. The fortune of one that means less for some.”
— Sarah McLachlan

As indicated by my photo, I am not 10 years old or younger, so I am no longer enamored of movies that feature animals that act like humans.

But my kids, like most kids, love such films, especially when the animals get the best of bad people. And so we recently saw “Furry Vengeance,” starring Brendan Fraser and Brooke Shields, despite my reluctance to see a film with a skunk out for revenge (use your imagination).

Fraser plays an overly ambitious “eco-developer” charged with ripping down a forest to construct an exurb of “green” McMansions in rural Oregon. His company president, a spoiled, effeminate Chinese-American, sends him and his family to live in the wild in a model home to oversee the development.

When the local animals realize that Fraser is there to destroy their home, they seek vengeance, poking, prodding, pecking and gassing him until he teeters on insanity. A bear even chases him into a porta-potty and hurls the toilet, with Fraser inside, into a tree. The porta-potty collapses and smothers Fraser in you-know-what when it hits the ground. It’s just that kind of movie.

Adults hate it, as evidenced by the film’s poor reviews. But judging by the roaring laughter I heard in the theater, kids love it.

Though I didn’t despise the film, I had a hard time with it. For one, it portrays animals as vengeful — and capable of exacting vengeance. They are neither. The film plays to our ancient fears of bears and skunks. Raccoons are wily deceivers. Birds are annoyances that drop poop on our nice clean yards. Nowhere in the film do we see animals as simply kindly creatures seeking survival in an uncertain world.