Bruce Willis Has Huge Netflix Hit in Wake of Dementia Diagnosis

A classic Bruce Willis film is gaining renewed interest on Netflix. The 2006 DreamWorks animated movie Over the Hedge, added to the streaming platform on April 1, is already ranked as the No. 4 Kids Movie and the No. 9 Movie overall in the U.S. The film stars Willis as RJ, a scheming raccoon who convinces a group of forest animals to help him raid a recently built suburb to repay a debt to a menacing bear named Vincent. During this epic journey, RJ and his friends face off against ferocious "soccer moms" and pest terminators, while RJ learns valuable lessons about friendship, loyalty, and the value of family along the way. Over the Hedge also features the voices of actors Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, and Avril Lavigne.

In 2006, Willis was interviewed along with his co-stars by Cinemablend. When asked about the difficulty of being alone doing standup in the recording booth, he said, "There's an immediacy to knowing whether you're funny or not. We had to wait almost three years to see if we were funny. Two and a half years. And then they show you a rough cut of the film, and it's like someone has just done the most complicated Euclidian geometry problem and gone, "Here is the answer." And you know why? Because everybody's laughing. He added, "At the end of the day, all this sh— that we went through that was anxiety causing and vulnerability and lost in the woods, and all that all goes away because you hear people laughing. That's the answer to the puzzle they confronted us all with."

Willis maintained a light-hearted, joking attitude throughout, particularly when asked how he got into the mind of the animals. He answered: "I actually went out and lived with some woodland creatures for about three weeks. Didn't get anything from them so that didn't work. Had to throw all that preparation away. I was bit by a possum. It, apparently, is called an opossum, did you know that? It's not a possum and they actually do play possum if they are frightened. Did you ever hear that playin' possum. And can a turtle actually come out of its shell. I thought there should have been more exploded animals. Come on, that was a staple of cartoon characters." Over the Hedge's resurgence has come amid Willis' battle with frontotemporal dementia. Willis' family announced he was diagnosed with aphasia in March 2022. In February, his family said he was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, which had progressed, and the actor now struggles with communication.