Monday 26 September 2016

Film: 'Hunt for the Wilderpeople'

('Wilder' to rhyme with 'builder'. No, I don't know what it means.)

I wouldn't have seen this had it not been so garlanded with praise from many quarters - and it's currently enjoying a mighty high IMDb average rating of 8.2. Wish I hadn't bothered.

A New Zealand film with a good clutch of native Kiwi actors in the minor roles, it shows off to superb advantage the quite exceptional landscape of that country, an inexplicably rare event outside the 'LOTR' and 'Hobbit' trilogies of films.

Julian Dennison, a seriously overweight, orphaned teenage delinquent, already with a long small-time criminal record, is given over by the childcare authorities to foster parents living in the mountain forests - she, a garrulous middle-aged woman who kills, skins, prepares and cooks wild animals for meals, and who doesn't survive long after the boy arrives - and Sam Neill, her grizzled, grumbling (and illiterate) husband. When the care supervisors hear about the wife's decease they tell the husband they will collect the boy until they can decide on his next home. The two of them, now with one of those mutual-enmity bonds between them with which we are so familiar, leave their ramshackle forest residence and go on the run in the wild.
As they roam around aimlessly they come across a handful of oddball characters, including three youngish, hostile trappers - and an intensely irritatingly dotty 'man of the mountains' - at whom we're supposed to be amused, I take it. 
The film throughout has several encounters with forest beasts, both tame and fierce, resulting in a (small) number of violent animal deaths - as well as that of one of the couple's two dogs. I won't pretend that I didn't find all these few incidents very uncomfortable to watch. I hope they didn't influence my final verdict but they undoubtedly did cloud any 'enjoyment' I might otherwise have experienced. 
While the two are on the run the publicity of their disappearance grows until they are pursued by full-scale police and military forces, it being believed that the Sam Neill character has kidnapped the boy for nefarious purposes.

I found the film fatally self-regarding. It's as though someone, the director Taika Waititi (also the screenplay writer from another source) said "Right everybody. Let's make an 'entertainment'!" The result being that  much of the cast of lesser characters seem to be acting their heads off in a conscious effort to be funny or profound - and they were neither! The badly behaved boy, Julian Dennison, composes haikus, would you believe? Needless to say he's also overflowing with wise-ass aphorisms, displaying a wisdom way beyond his years, something I just cannot abide in films. The female senior childcare officer was another one who mugged her lines wholesale, expecting us to laugh at her exasperations. Only Sam Neill comes out of the project with any significant dignity, but even he is served with a script that hardly ever shines.

Anyway, what do I know? It's a film that's been fantastically well received in many quarters, even applauded in places. I can only report on my own reaction, which corresponds to a score of...........5.
  

8 comments:

  1. Oh my Ray, So much to dislike about this film and I haven't even seen it yet. First Sam Neil, he of the Very Expressive Eyebrows, which seems to be his main acting talent and why he is cast in films. I've always been distracted by those arched eyebrows. Second, a wise assed kid spouting language way beyond his years is a major turnoff for me. When I hear those words emanating from their pie holes I think of a bunch of long haired, scraggily writers sitting around a table writing those words. Turnoff! And the killing of animals in films for "entertainment?" Not something I find necessary to view in a movie.
    Thanks for the warning.
    Ron

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    1. Well, I can tolerate Sam Neill, Ron. He doesn't rub me up the wrong way anything like a number of others do. As for the other two features of this film mentioned, you and I are totally at one. Although my opinion is very much in a minority, I can't do other than say "AVOID!"

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  2. I really enjoyed the film myself.

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    1. As did most others who saw it. I can only conclude that if there's something wrong with somebody I don't need to look further than myself. But honesty, and all that....

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  3. I've been offline for a while so I am catching up with your reviews. I think I must be the only person in New Zealand who hasn't seen this movie, I just haven't felt the need. No doubt I will be stripped of my Kiwi citizenship if anyone finds out.

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    1. It's gloriously filmed, Judith, so it has that going for it at the very least. It was only with the 'Rings' films that many of us became fully aware of the truly breath-taking landscapes which NZ possesses - so 'near' to OZ yet so incredibly different.
      I think this film has been well-received just about everywhere, even ecstatically, though it defeats me as to why. I'll be most interested to know what you think when you catch up with it, as you must.

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  4. From the title, all I could think of was a Yiddish song my mother had on an old record, "GESHRAY OF DeVILDE KOTCHKE" by Mickey Katz (Yiddish parody of "Cry of the Wild Goose"). I have a feeling you'd enjoy THAT more than the film.

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    1. I've little doubt that you're right, Mitch - and it would have been shorter as well!

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