Furry Vengeance quickly joins the worst of these. To its slight favour, it does not have the animals talking (apart from one gag over the end credits), although they do communicate among themselves using the filmed equivalent of cartoon speech balloons where they demonstrate their intentions via newsreel clips, even clips from Braveheart (1995). Even though we are spared smartass dialogue, there is still the mind-croggling inanity of scenes where they take over Brendan Fraser’s kitchen in a mass disco dance at one point. Oh, and a gag where we see a gopher-whacking game where the tables are reversed and gophers are whacking human heads that pop up. There is also an excruciating series of scenes over the end credits where the animals, Brendan Fraser and Brooke Shields play out a series of pastiches of Grease (1978), Risky Business (1985) and The Blue Lagoon (1980), the film in which Brooke Shields first found her fame as a teen star.

The basic premise of Furry Vengeance has essentially been to conduct a variant of a 1970s Nature’s Revenge film – something like The Birds (1963), Frogs (1972) or Day of the Animals (1977) – by way of Home Alone (1990). The entirety of the film consists of Brendan Fraser being the brunt of a series of slapstick pratfalls where the animals contrive to humiliate, poop on or cause him to fall into something. He gets to wit:- blasted in the crotch with a lawn sprinkler; is kept awake all night by a crow pecking, which then causes him to fall off the roof into a kiddie paddling pool as he goes out to shoo it away; has acorns dropped in his cereal and his milk carton holed; goes flying off his exercise machine after the beaver pulls the power cable; a scene where he takes a bath and the animals steal his clothes and he gets accidentally caught up in his wife’s bra just as workmen outside look in the window and he is then forced to sneak out of the house wearing her clothes; several repeated scenes with him being gassed by skunks that have snuck into his SUV; the animals taking over his vehicle outside a psychologist’s office and driving it into the lake with him hanging out the window; he being trapped in a portable toilet as it is bashed about by a bear. The result is not at all dissimilar to Home Alone, a film that was entirely premised around seeing two obvious villains being made the constant brunt of slapstick violence.

Furry Vengeance only operates on the level of slapstick pratfalls and nothing more than that. It is a film that can be watched (and moreover understood) by somebody with an IQ in the single digits. Despite this, in the last few minutes it suddenly turns around and has Brendan Fraser realize the error of his way and unleash the animals against his boss (Ken Jeong with an incredibly annoying silly voice), whereupon it has the gall to try and deliver up a message about environmental awareness. The end credits proudly display the film’s Green credentials, claiming that it was made Carbon Neutral and promoting environmental causes.

I admired director Roger Kumble’s first work, the stylish and sophisticated teen film Cruel Intentions (1999), but he has spent the decade since frittering that promise away making instantly forgettable teen comedies and romcoms. Similarly, when he first appeared in the mid-1990s, Brendan Fraser seemed a funny presence. However, from the late 1990s on, Fraser has become stuck in the same lazy comic routine without variance and any potential he had as a serious actor has long evaporated. Perhaps the saddest thing about Furry Vengeance is that Brendan Fraser has elected to come on board as an executive producer. Doing so is usually an opportunity for a name actor to shepherd in a production that otherwise might not have made it and in turn push a vehicle that would show off their acting range. On the other hand, Fraser has gone exactly the opposite way here and is at his most blandly ingratiating – it’s an entirely vapid performance. It is not that Brendan Fraser can’t act – see the solid dramatic work he has done in the likes of The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995), Gods and Monsters (1998) and The Quiet American (2002) – it is just that he has figured out he can make a multi-million dollar paycheque by no longer bothering.

(Winner Worst Film in this site’s Top 10 Films of 2010 list).