Hunt for the Wilderpeople

A fairly enjoyable film starring a great Sam Neill and an interesting obese brat who performed more than convincingly. A big upside is the New Zealand scenery, which is literally a treat for the eye, and I also praise the perfect scene with the huge wild pig. There is less humour, but it's nice to watch, still I don't feel like 4*. (08/03/2017)

With his last vampire parody Taika Waititi made me laugh like nobody else has in a long time. So I assumed the Hunt for the Wilderpeople would be in a similar vein, but I was mistaken. It sure is a funny movie. Only the good premise and a limited number of jokes were pushed aside by the New Zealand landscape, which is the main and most important character of the whole movie. Sure, the little fat kid who presents the Maori nation, suppressed by the current commercial world ruled in his case by the black gang of rappers led by Jay-Z, has enough to do with it. I simply couldn’t shake the impression that his character was sometimes a little over the edge compared to what I lived in. After the film, I almost felt like I was ceasing to understand today’s young people, even though I was one of them until recently. However, Taika Waititi directed it well, so he cleverly pitted today’s modern world against the very nature from which the Maori came, and even though the conclusion was quite brutally overdone, the film still managed to entertain me for almost two hours. (07/04/2017)

If I were supposed to take care of that fat bastard (sorry, morbidly obese troubled boy), it would definitely be a short film, as he definitely wouldn't survive his attitude in the beginning. The longer I watched, the more obvious it was that it was a typical family film, whose plot, despite its many unlikely adventures, was inevitably marching towards a happy ending, which isn’t exactly my thing. It’s not that I hate happy endings, but the story just wasn’t any good. I’m not sure why the characters repeatedly said there were a million hectares of the Bush around them, when both runaways kept stumbling across people all the time. Lame. (10/03/2018)

An often implemented concept receives a superb treatment, wherein all of Waititi’s merits are put to use – playful imagination based on reality but unhindered by realism, immeasurable fondness for total outsiders and the asocial, brilliant comedic timing, pleasure in the local New Zealand motifs, particularly those from the world of the lowest social classes, and a perfect feel for the use of non-actors. In combination with the popular humoristic novel, it is no wonder that the result became the most successful New Zealand film of all time in terms of viewership. Like, for example, Stephen Chow in Hong Kong long ago, Waititi manages to render gags of the lowest register with peculiarity and sophistication. This is not idle, thoughtless humour, but rather perfectly crafted entertainment built on precision timing and flawless mastery of the filmmaker’s art. Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd knew that everyone could fall to the ground, but only a master can do it perfectly for the camera. No matter that some viewers are unable to understand that. (12/07/2016)

A relaxing comedy (it sometimes reminded me of a more vulgar version of Kolya), which I would screen as a double film with Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. It's playful, sensitive, funny, very well acted, filmed and accompanied by great music. It perhaps bothered me that it was a bit predictable. However, I wish I would see such films more often in the movie theatre. (15/11/2017)