Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
Directed by Taika Waititi
Ricky is a defiant young city kid who finds himself on the run with his cantankerous foster uncle 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.
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32 films that influenced Hunt for the Wilderpeople
What critics say influenced Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Remainder of the pic is a backwoods manhunt that’s both a salute to and gentle parody of several late 1970s-early ’80s Kiwi classics, with specific references not just to “Dogs” but also “Goodbye Pork Pie,” “Smash Palace” and more.
It's intriguing too that Neill, the man who who coined the term "cinema of unease", starts off the movie as if he's wandered in from Vincent Ward's Vigil into a laugh-out-loud movie that makes plenty of references to the crowd-pleasing Kiwi movies of the late 70s and 80s - like Sleeping Dogs (in which Neill got chased around the bush, as he is here) and Goodbye Pork Pie.
Remainder of the pic is a backwoods manhunt that’s both a salute to and gentle parody of several late 1970s-early ’80s Kiwi classics, with specific references not just to “Dogs” but also “Goodbye Pork Pie,” “Smash Palace” and more.
Though Wilderpeople does wind up somewhere that sure looks like Smash Palace, so maybe not.
As for the film itself, though Waititi includes aspects that play like genre parody—a montage scored to Leonard Cohen ’s interpretation of the “Song of the French Partisan” unexpectedly recalling McCabe & Mrs. Miller; a Mad Max-like chase climax; Lukasz Buda, Samuel Scott and Conrad Wedde’s 1980s-style synthesizer-laden score—Hunt for the Wilderpeople is ultimately disarming in its innocent sincerity.
There's nothing new in Waititi's treatment of characters like these, and the staging of more fast-paced moments — like a climactic, Mad Max-style car chase — is too awkward to be exciting.
Waititi also makes room for more conventionally programmed sequences, like an encounter with a nasty wild boar in which the intrepid pair’s dogs exhibit their selfless dedication to their masters, or the culmination of the pursuit, complete with a race across the desert and military roadblocks, that comes across like a junior-league “Mad Max.”
Reminiscent of Rushmore and Moonrise Kingdom, Waititi's follow-up to last year's vampire-reality-show comedy What We Do in the Shadows is a deranged coming-of-age adventure about a young delinquent prone to expressing himself via haiku.
CALL OF THE WILD: A bit like 'Moonrise Kingdom'-only set in New Zealand and with Michael Bay-esque chase sequences-the Sam Neill-starring 'Hunt for the Wilderpeople' is heartfelt and delightful.
Adapted from Barry Crump’s novel Wild Pork and Watercress, Hunt for the Wilderpeople embraces its novelistic origins by dividing its story into ten chapters, but Waititi gives the story a quirky spin, as if the likes of Where the Red Fern Grows crossed with Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom.
"Wilderpeople" is the cheeky love child of HBO's "Flight of the Conchords" and Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom."
More specifically, his story recalls the wilderness adventure of Moonrise Kingdom: orphans, dogs, child services, sometimes-pitiless fates.
But this is no “Moonrise Kingdom,” although it bears similarities, and its influence can clearly be seen in the modus-operandi of “Wilderpeople” creator Taika Waititi.
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A snowy montage scene set to Leonard Cohen recalls Robert Altman's 1971 opus McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
The Terminator, Scarface and First Blood are name-dropped, the score is laden with synths and there's even a climactic car chase.
There is a neat digression in the form of some hostile pigs, deft pop culture nods to The Terminator and The Lord of the Rings and, best of all, Psycho Sam ( Rhys Darby , better known as the Conchords’ hapless manager), an amusingly deranged denizen of the forest.
It’s a juvenile film in a way that’s very freeing, allowing viewers 102 minutes to forget niceties and enjoy characters who break the rules, get dirty and even make numerous references to movies both obvious (“First Blood”) and very tangential (“The Terminator,” “McCabe & Mrs. Miller”) in way that’s actually funny, not grating.
Our mismatched duo rather accidentally wind up becoming famous fugitives, and “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” blossoms into a boisterous outdoor adventure, nodding to influences as disparate as “Up” and “The Blues Brothers” while maintaining a distinctly handcrafted, funky vibe all its own.
Divided into ten titled chapters, which feature the world’s worst eulogy (courtesy of a fantastic Waititi cameo), seemingly gigantic wild boar and a climactic car chase that references Thelma & Louise, Wilderpeople presents a comically heightened world.
With something for the big kid in all of us, Hunt for the Wilderpeople pours a dose of the mystery and wonderment of Beasts of the Southern Wild, the sense of loss and troubled childhoods of Son of Rambow and the reckless, carefree abandonment of outlaws on the run in Thelma & Louise.
If one imagines a real-life version of Up with a bit of Thelma & Louise thrown in, they get Hunt for the Wilderpeople , Taika Waititi‘s charming on-the-run adventure comedy.
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It's short for Hector, and the Faulkner part fits as well, particularly per William Faulkner's The Reivers.
Unlike previous Thor directors Kenneth Branagh and Alan Taylor, who’d both had at least some experience directing action sequences (in Henry V and on Game Of Thrones , respectively), Waititi is known exclusively for small, gentle comedies, often in collaboration with Flight Of The Conchords’ Jemaine Clement.