Cartoon Carrey

If we were to conjure up an animated avatar for Jim Carrey then it probably wouldn't be a million miles from the cocksure racoon that will bear his voice in Over The Hedge. You won't get to see it until 2005 but Carrey will make his animated debut in the film, an environmentally aware adventure from Dreamworks. Being overseen by Sinbad director, Tim Johnson the film is currently in production and we received a full account straight from the horse's mouth. "We have Verne the turtle, voiced by Garry Shandling," explains Johnson. "He wakes up after sleeping for five months and hibernating through a cold mid-Western winter, takes two steps and walks into this thing he's never seen before - this hedge. It turns out that while he and the squirrels and his other friends were sleeping, this developer has built a hundred homes over half their woodland. Garry teams up with a sort of rascal racoon, voiced by Jim Carrey, who claims to know everything about humans and that's where the mayhem starts." RJ the racoon soon wins the hearts of his fellow woodland inhabitants as unofficial ambassador to the realm of men. "In RJ we've got a real sort of Music Man character - he comes in from out of town and charms all the other animals into thinking the humans are their new best friends. He says, thing like 'the Humans put food into special cans and leave it outside just for you.' So you've got in Jim Carrey the ability to be a real hustler but with a real smile on his face." Capturing the rubber-faced actor's flexible phizog is the one area Johnson has doubts about. "It's downright daunting is what it is," he said. "We've actually got to make an animated character that's as good as live-action Jim Carrey. It's a challenge." Clearly not having enough on his hands with Carrey's animated escapades, Johnson is also working on Tusker, an elephantine saga (sorry) starring Morgan Freeman and set across the savannas of Southeast Asia. "Morgan plays a very powerful elephant who's sort of an outcast from the herd, but when the herd runs into humanity they come to him because he knows the ways of man. He's another sort of sage character." Not a huge stretch for the actor then? "No. Morgan could probably read you a phone book and you'd be nodding your head and taking notes."