If you're going to make cartoons about critters, the late Chuck "Looney Toons" Jones used to preach, build them around the animal's chief concern: survival. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are always avoiding the shotgun and the stew pot. Wile E. Coyote is desperate for a dinner of road runner.
That principle pays off in "The Nut Job," a surprisingly simple, funny and often cute slapstick comedy about a squirrel planning a nut heist so that he'll have enough food to last through winter.
Surly (Will Arnett, the perfect voice for cartoons) always has lived just for himself, which irks the other animals of Liberty Park. Chipmunks and mice, moles and groundhogs, they all stock up for the winter, collectively, in a system overseen by Raccoon (Liam Neeson). But Surly and his silent rat pal Buddy are every-animal-for-himself guys. Surly's schemes never involve sharing.
Contrast Surly with his fellow squirrel Grayson (Brendan Fraser), because the red squirrel Andie (Katherine Heigl) and every other animal in the park does. The dashing, dopey Grayson is all about heroics, and looking good as he saves the day.
An epic failure to steal a street vendor's nut cart gets Surly labeled "a clear and present danger" to the others, so he is banished from the park. He destroyed the other animals' winter survival stash. Is Surly — con artist, thief and bully to pigeons — anxious to make good on what he's cost everyone? Not on your life.
And when he runs across the shop that the nut cart came from, he figures this huge stash is his. It'll take blackmail by Andie, or worse, to get him to share.
But Surly's caper runs right up against what the human owners of the nut shop have in mind. They're wise guys out to rob the bank across the street. The animals, with Surly's grudging cooperation, must race the robbers to see who can pull off his heist first.
The sight gags have a marvelous thunder-clap suddenness to them. Animated movies live and die on their pace, and this one clips along.
