Quirky ‘Wilderpeople’ strands mismatched duo in the bush

Against spectacular landscapes, Kiwi comedy offers fresh approach to familiar formula.

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In the bittersweet action-comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a troubled teen and his crotchety foster dad spend most of the movie fleeing the authorities in “the bush” of New Zealand. At one point the pair hide by the roadside as their pursuers pass by, and when the boy compares their situation to a scene in The Lord of the Rings, Wilderpeople winks at the status of the Kiwi film industry.

Peter Jackson’s Tolkien trilogies were such successes, and touched on so many of the country’s locations, they seem practically synonymous with New Zealand. But half-Māori filmmaker Taika Waititi’s capture much more of the country’s culture with his modest comedies about universal experiences. Following the coming-of-age tale Boy and the oddball romance Eagle vs. Shark, Hunt for the Wilderpeople charmingly captures the slowly thawing relationship between an insolent kid and a misanthropic adult, while proving unabashedly in love with the New Zealand landscape.


Wilderpeople begins with a hard-nosed social worker (Rachel House) delivering orphan Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) to the remote farm of his new foster family. “Auntie” Bella (the superb Rima Te Wiata) makes a few jokes about Ricky’s husky frame, but proves genuinely warm and accepting of her sullen gangsta-obsessed charge. Her husband Hec (Sam Neill) doesn’t disguise his lack of enthusiasm for the boy, but seems too attached to Bella to refuse her.

A series of unfortunate events — some tragic, most farcical — leave the pair stranded in the bush, with Hec suffering a fractured ankle. While Hec heals and Ricky improves his backwoods skills, New Zealand’s police and child services look to Hec’s checkered past and assume Ricky was kidnapped, leading to a nationwide manhunt and media event.

At first, writer/director Waititi crafts the kind of orderly, controlled comedy you’d expect from a Wes Anderson or an Edgar Wright, with carefully-framed visual jokes and a close attention to character. Waititi appreciate jokes that unfold in long takes and those that come in quick hits, such as a montage showing Ricky’s history of urban vandalism. The film even includes droll chapter headings.
embed-1 But the longer Hunt for the Wilderpeople spends in the bush, the more unkempt and woozy it becomes. The film can jarringly shift in tone from survival adventure to bittersweet character study to slapstick comedy, particularly when the action builds to increasingly elaborate chase sequences as it near its ending.

Waititi’s cast helps keep the film from losing its way. Neill — who played a similarly gruff paleontologist who becomes a surrogate dad in Jurassic Park — brings wry humor to Hec’s genuine disquiet when dealing with civilized society. Dennison amusingly shows the vulnerability beneath Ricky’s would-be tough demeanor. Waititi shines in a small but hilarious role as a preacher — and often proves to be his own best resource (see his underrated turn as a finicky vampire in his cult mockumentary What We Do In the Shadows).

Wilderpeople ultimately hews close to cinematic formula, so the freshness of Waititi’s filmmaking voice tends to be overshadowed by its more conventional resolutions. It’s sadly ironic that a film that could please most moviegoers seems fated to only play art houses. But don’t cry for Waititi, who has been recruited by Marvel to helm Thor: Ragnarok. Hopefully he can make Asgard as distinctive as his vision of New Zealand.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople. 3 stars. Directed by Taika Waititi. Stars Julian Dennison, Sam Neill. Rated PG-13. Opens Fri., July 15. At Landmark Midtown Arts Cinema.