House of Flying Daggers was Over the Hedge

House of Flying Daggers started with dance choreography, featuring the accomplished dancer Ziyi Zhang. If you remove the beauty of the dance, you are left with a sloppy Bazooka Joe comic of a story. While the themes are culturally specific and the lust curtailed by duty and implied love, it is nontheless a sour mash of bad dialogue and circumstances. The Spy Kids animation in the movie takes away from the already weak story. It was all visual, so, technically you could strip away the soundtrack and replace it. I saw the English version, which was weaker still. Overall they did an alright sound remaster, but sound is intrinsically valuable in a movie about a blind woman/girl who uses sound. It was like watching an aquarium, while you were entertained visually, in the end you wonder why you sat that long.

Over the Hedge slipped into the area of one half of an idea with thirteen other ideas glued together for a miss. I like Wanda Sykes, but she wasn't enough to save it. When your star line up is Gary Shandling and Bruce Willis, well disaster looms. Hammy getty loopy on caffiene, where have I seen that before, oh yes ... in a better movie, Hoodwinked. Thomas Haden-Church as an overstuffed terminator -- nice touch. The movie's conclusion was just terrible. I tried to put it in perspective for a child, but the bear, "I'm going to kill you" and a few other adult references make me rate this one poor. The link of this to the comic strip is a S - T - R - E - T - C - H. I doubt that anyone watching the movie would hurry to start reading the comic.

Summarized:
House of Flying Daggers, visually interesting and that's where it ends. Over the Hedge, overdone with some samples of clever scenes.