Directed by:
Taika WaititiScreenplay:
Taika WaititiCinematography:
Lachlan MilneCast:
Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Rima Te Wiata, Oscar Kightley, Rhys Darby, Cohen Holloway, Stan Walker, Taika Waititi, Rachel House, Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne (more)Plots(1)
Ricky (Julian Dennison) is a defiant young city kid who finds himself on the run with his grumpy foster uncle (Sam Neill) in the wild New Zealand bush. A national manhunt ensues and the two are forced to put aside their differences and work together to survive in this hilarious and heart-felt adventure. (Madman Entertainment)
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Reviews (8)
Waititi's got it in him. A film that is a first-rate and unrelenting critique of the complexity and sterility of the contemporary world, but at the same time never stops churning out amusing plot twists, metaphorical ideas and even some great lines that will stay on my mind for a long time. And where the legibly plotted development of a simple story isn't enough, the chemistry between the wilful Ricky and the hardened Sam Neill helps, as he takes on another memorable role. Armed with a volley of cinematic references, Waititi escapes into a wild territory of endless irony and hyperbole, where he never gets lost but manages to merge deliberate plot extravagance and goofiness with a cleverly intimate story that, while failing to inspire any thought, is so entertaining and functional on the surface that could be a lesson to many indie writers. Let’s hope Taika won’t get burned in Hollywood. 80%
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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*.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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