'Furry Vengeance' against developers

While your 4-year-old guffaws through "Furry Vengeance," you may start looking for ways to pass the time. You could place bets on when the cast of forest creatures will dance to a golden oldie; put the over-under at 30 minutes. You also could try to guess which popular movies will get the usual cultural wink (easy) or which rap song will play over the credit roll (harder, actually).

After that, you're mostly stuck waiting for glimpses of Ken Jeong, the comedic actor who helped enliven last year's "The Hangover" and simply hijacked "Role Models" the year before. As real-estate mogul Neal Lyman, Jeong further hones his on-screen persona: smug, irritating and happy to be ruining your day. He's becoming a brand-name comedic villain, much like Dabney Coleman did 30 years ago.

Brendan Fraser plays one of Lyman's lackeys, Dan Sanders, who lives with his wife (Brooke Shields) and teenager (Matt Prokop) in an Oregon forest that is being transformed into a McMansion preserve. But the local critters decide to fight back, which means makeshift catapults, coordinated skunk attacks and lots of screaming from Fraser, who isn't asked to do much else.

The animals are real, though computers add the occasional smile or frown; voices are limited to squeaks and chittering. Nearly the same goes for the humans, whose dialogue is minimal (all the easier when dubbing the overseas versions, perhaps). Instead, they grunt and gasp like anime characters: "Huh? Ah! Hmmm. Oh?"

In the end, "Furry Vengeance" is a bit like playing 90 minutes' worth of peek-a-boo: If it keeps your toddler happy, lost brain cells are a small price to pay.