This film was described by my friend as a “high” movie, meaning it’s something you’ll definitely want to watch while high. 10 minutes in and I’ve seen enough to agree wholeheartedly. I always view raccoons as something you should always be wary of, despite their usual portrayals in cartoons as huggable and cute, their depiction in this movie satisfies both schools of thought. Just watch it to see what I mean. The movie itself is generally silly and lighthearted, with serious hard hitting lessons interjected at random points. One thing I did notice was that they treated deaths as inconsequential and they generally breeze through them, I attribute these as akin to the nature of the fun-loving and mischievous raccoons, whose point of view we’re seeing the movie from.

My favorite scene in the movie is the one where the hot headed Gonta instigates a coup during a raccoon meeting where they were discussing ways to stop the humans from clearing out their forest home. Gonta points a gun at everyone as his followers rush into the room armed with club sticks. Gonta issues a threat that whoever fails to follow his orders will be killed and I thought at last, the movie is now turning serious but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Trying to inspire the meek raccoons to fight, Gonta uses the “when a mouse is cornered he will bite a cat” metaphor with hilarious results. The simple-minded raccoons are puzzled why Gonta was calling himself a mouse or why in the world would they would want to bite a cat. One hungry raccoon muses how a mouse would be a welcome snack at that moment, and a debate starts between the rebels and the hostages on whether a deep fried mouse or a tempura mouse is the tastiest.
Gonta tries to take control of the meeting again, silencing everyone with an angry shout and declares that….. tempura mouse is the best while doing a caricature dance. I think that scene perfectly shows how fun-loving and carefree the raccoons are. I want to say absent-minded or ditzy but those fail the exact description I want to use. Gonta starts a dangerous coup but is easily sidetracked like everyone else when a tasty food is brought up. When he gives up in frustration, the others don’t even punish him for what he did and easily accepts him back into the fold.