Grova Nostra is a demented animated movie about cute little woodland critters getting caught up in a mafia war. It reminds me of those Satan-worshipping "Christmas Critters" on South Park, except far less foul-mouthed and slightly less homicidal.

The movie opens with three different sections introducing three different sets of critters, and then brings them all together in a clever Pulp Fiction-style time juggle. The rabbits section features a musical number that ends in a brutal slaying. Afterwards, an impressionable lad named Zipper learns about the birds and the bees from his folks in an entirely inappropriate way. In the hamsters section, Dad talks like the Fonz while Mom goes on a cannibalistic rampage trying to eat her young. The Ferrets section isn't about kids. Instead, it's about Mr. Enzo and his friend Genghis the dog.

Writer-director F. Ryan Neumann thrives on outrageously politically incorrect humor. At one point, Mr. Enzo refers to "the fire statue those ghosts are always putting on Tyrone's lawn," then the film cuts to a black man hosing off a burnt wooden cross. There's a reference to Silence of the Lambs ("it puts the shampoo on its fur"), and when Zipper shyly refers to his "chumballs," Mr. Enzo picks one of them up and says, "It's s**t, Zipper." There's even a running gag about eating s**t, which sounds gross but is handled, well, tastefully.

At 21 minutes, Grova Nostra runs a little too long but rarely wears out its welcome. I'm not sure what lesson the kids are supposed to have learned, except maybe how to beat a stool pigeon to death with your bare hands.