New Zealand  –  Adventure, Comedy, Drama  –  Year: 2016  –  Running time: 101 mins
Language: English

Audience Response:

Rating:  (4.79 from 24 responses)

• Excellent’: 19 votes
• ‘Very Good’: 5 votes
• ‘Good’: 0 votes
• ‘Satisfactory’: 0 votes
• ‘Poor’: 0 votes

Read the comments here or visit our “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” discussion page.

Synopsis:

Here is a new, refreshing take on the road movie and coming-of-age tale. Based on Barry Crump’s novel – about a wayward boy who finds his place in the world after embarking on an adventure with a curmudgeonly guardian, the film has all of Waititi’s distinctive brand of humour. Visual gags and broad jokes come loose and fast: Julian Dennison is a real comic performer as the problem child, Ricky, while Sam Neil is admirable as the grumpy carer.

One of the most sincere and funny portraits of family life to come along in a while.
April Wolfe (LA Weekly)

Director: Taika Waititi
Thor: Ragnarok (2017) / What We Do In The Shadows (2014) / Boy (2010)
Cast:
Sam Neill                                        …   Hec
Julian Dennison                              …   Ricky
Rima Te Wiata                                …   Bella
Rachel House                                 …   Paula
Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne             …   Kahu
Oscar Kightley                                …   Andy
Stan Walker                                    …   Ron
(for full cast, and more information, see “Hunt For The Wilderpeople” in IMDB)

CFC Film Notes                                        (Click here for print version)

“There was a queue outside – which caused comment enough as this never happens. There was an amazing mix – toddlers and mums, a lone hunter-type, retired farm ladies. The film ticks all the right boxes. Everyone in New Zealand will know these characters in some form or other, from the gruff old bushman to the earthy mother figure and the chill axed cop. A mix of subtle bathos and pathos will make it universally appealing.” Hokitika   South Island NZ (population about 3,500).
A local review of the film which was originally premiered at Sundance 2016.

Waititi had begun to adapt the book in 2005, had made multiple drafts, set it aside before returning to it and then producing a script very fast and shooting it in just 5 weeks with, for the most part,  a single camera. (The book is apparently much darker than the film and has a very different ending). When the film was released in NZ it became the highest grossing weekend for a NZ film and then the highest grossing NZ film to date.

This would tend to suggest that Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a bit like the NZ equivalent of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  However, its subject matter is somewhat different!

It focuses on the life of Ricky Baker – an urban, young and overweight juvenile offender who idealises hip hop and creates haiku as a method of externalising emotional conflict. (He does this as a result of his counselling therapy sessions). Ricky is stuck in the New Zealand subpar youth welfare system, (apparently known for its endless government restructuring with little or no substantial improvement). Ricky ends up on a rotting farm somewhere in the rural back blocks with foster parents. And so we are set for the inevitable “discovery “ of unlikely alliances and developing relationships.

Some reviewers have found the whole exercise silly and scary at one and the same time – a sort of fantasy come true. Others have found it formulaic and unoriginal, with the humour being derived from forced situations and the peripheral characters becoming increasingly unbelievable.

Yet others have felt it is an enjoyable and emotional survival story with the right amount of action, thought provoking situations and dialogue to make it a perfect film.

One of the stars of the film is of course the NZ landscape shown from sweeping helicopter shots, and if you are in NZ why not? Waititi also uses 360-degree pans as an alternative to the standard passing of time montage sequences. His main focus however is on showing an unaffected naturalism, both in the film making and the unpolished characters that we root for. There are some non-PC attitudes on show and (plot spoiler) a very large CG wild pig.

“We knew the pig had to be really huge and scary. It would have been hard to find a pig that big – never mind training it.” Waititi.

Selected UK reviews:

Observer (Wendy Ide)
 Empire Magazine (Dan Jolin)

 

 

 

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