Review of Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) by Matt C — 29 Sep 2016

Coming off of the success of Flight of the Conchords and last year's What We Do in the Shadows, Taiki Waititi is back in the director's chair with the equally bonkers Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

It maintains the same sense of ridiculousness but happens to inject a good amount of heart into its zaniness, but it's sure to please fans of his previous works. In fact, the wonderfully offbeat nature of this movie is charming and quick on its feet, as to be expected.

It's also rather hilarious at times, despite the tone overstaying its welcome after a while. The movie follows Ricky (Julian Dennison), an insubordinate kid sent to live in the country with a foster family in the form of Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and Hec (Sam Neill), but when Bella dies, Ricky runs away into the bush, leading Hec to follow him.

Child services comes to the conclusion that Ricky has been kidnapped and that Hec is insane, and the two go on the run for months on end. This is the silliness audiences have come to expect from Waititi, and he of course has a knack for focusing in on what makes these situations so accessible.

Where What We Do in the Shadows was a mockumentary, this is a more traditionally made movie in an aesthetic sense, but it certainly has its flair. The landscape shots of the bush are rather beautiful and the camera movements play into the comedic timing, with wonderfully exaggerated camera zooms and storybook-esque chapter titles every fifteen to twenty minutes.

The actors all do good work, namely Sam Neill, whose deadpan expressions lend themselves both into the comedy and insights into his character's personality. The young Julian Dennison, who was about twelve or thirteen during filming, lends depth to a character who could have easily just been a defiant fat kid, and he and Waititi allow him to always be a sympathetic and understandable protagonist.

The wonderful Rhys Darby has a small role as a paranoid conspiracy theorist, which plays into his manic strengths, but by the time he arrives, the film's tone stops being as fresh as it once was. It was the first 75 minutes or so that Hunt for the Wilderpeople was nothing short of great.

With all of the aforementioned positives, I was enjoying myself thoroughly. However, the movie is pretty one-note--that is, its nonstop whimsical charm coats the entire film. That obviously isn't an issue since it worked so well for a majority of the movie, but I'm not entirely sure that it could fill 101 minutes to a consistent degree of success.

Because the movie is pretty similar throughout, my interest starting to decrease a bit. The rest of the movie works so well and therefore I was never bored, but it did bring the movie down a notch. However, this is an issue that I had with What We Do in the Shadows as well, so it very well might be a matter of taste.

While it may linger for too long come the end of act two, Hunt for the Wilderpeople is still a step up from most of the comedies of 2016, and the way that it manages to paint its characters helps it have more longevity than it otherwise might have had.

Neill and Dennison are great and I'd love to see more of them in the future, as would I like to see Waititi display more of his prowess in visual and verbal comedy. This could get a bit better on a second viewing now that I know how one-note the tone is, but I definitely enjoyed it nonetheless.

And note: this would make for a great double feature with Moonrise Kingdom. 7.7/10, solid, one thumb up, above average, etc.