Boog is a domesticated grizzly bear who leads a pampered life in a small mountain town. One day, crazy hunter Shaw brings a wounded deer called Elliot to town strapped to his car, and Boog makes the mistake of freeing him. Elliot is a madcap runt of a deer who has been ejected from his herd for being annoying. He proceeds to annoy Boog to the point where he goes rampant, and the townspeople decide that he’s too dangerous to stay there any more. So his keeper Giselle takes him high up in the mountains, and lets him loose in the wild.

Cue mismatched buddy antics as Boog and Elliot try to make their way back to town while avoiding Shaw, trees full of aggressive squirrels, and other madcap diversions.

The trouble is that Elliot really is annoying, which doesn’t translate into a whole heap of funny, and the other characters don’t have enough interest to compensate for him.

Despite this, I think we’re in the middle of a new Golden Age of animation. The quality of the visuals are excellent (although the animators are a bit too much in love with Boog’s fur). Now if only the filmmakers would start spending some of their budgets on better scripts…