Runtime:
101 minutes
Directed
by: Taika Waititi
Starring:
Sam Neill, Julian Dennison, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Tioreore
Ngatai-Melbourne
From:
Many different New Zealand companies
This won't be a popular opinion but I hope everyone can understand why I feel this way:
I realize this will be one of those
reviews where many will virulently disagree, but for me this movie
wasn't all that funny... and I am someone who thinks What We Do in the
Shadows is great. IMO, that is much funnier than this film, where there
were a bunch of annoying characters yelling at each other and I sure as
hell never warmed up to that annoying fat kid Ricky, which is a problem
as he was the lead.
No matter the way that his character changes, I never enjoyed that fake gangster wannabe little bastard. Even at the very end, he was as irritating as he was when he first showed up in the middle of nowhere as the foster kid to a daffy middle-aged lady and her cantankerous husband Hector (Sam Neill), an outdoorsman (to use a New Zealand term, a Southern Man) who-understandably to me-doesn't like Ricky either. My opinion did not change even as the relationship between Ricky and Hector grew as they spend a lot of time in the woods and end up being the targets of a manhunt due to circumstances, including one plot point I thought was kind of gross and I am not sure why it was needed.
Really, if it wasn't for Neill-for once using his natural accent-I don't think I'd even rate this as average. Sure, there were a few times I laughed and the rural New Zealand areas they shot at were beautiful and the jaunty musical score was interesting, but it was Old Sam that helped keep my interest in this, whether it was his natural talents or how his character was like an audience surrogate, if the audience was only me. Yeah Hector, I do not like Ricky either; in fact, you should have thrown him into a woodchipper! That and some moments meant that this was not a movie I would call bad.
I wish I could have blissfully been charmed by this epic tale, but I really wasn't. It's been broached by me before how I feel about modern comedies and modern humor-not a lot of it tickles my funny bone. I am greatly disappointed as the previous film from the director I thought was hilarious and I just presumed it'd be more of the same here. Unfortunately...
No matter the way that his character changes, I never enjoyed that fake gangster wannabe little bastard. Even at the very end, he was as irritating as he was when he first showed up in the middle of nowhere as the foster kid to a daffy middle-aged lady and her cantankerous husband Hector (Sam Neill), an outdoorsman (to use a New Zealand term, a Southern Man) who-understandably to me-doesn't like Ricky either. My opinion did not change even as the relationship between Ricky and Hector grew as they spend a lot of time in the woods and end up being the targets of a manhunt due to circumstances, including one plot point I thought was kind of gross and I am not sure why it was needed.
Really, if it wasn't for Neill-for once using his natural accent-I don't think I'd even rate this as average. Sure, there were a few times I laughed and the rural New Zealand areas they shot at were beautiful and the jaunty musical score was interesting, but it was Old Sam that helped keep my interest in this, whether it was his natural talents or how his character was like an audience surrogate, if the audience was only me. Yeah Hector, I do not like Ricky either; in fact, you should have thrown him into a woodchipper! That and some moments meant that this was not a movie I would call bad.
I wish I could have blissfully been charmed by this epic tale, but I really wasn't. It's been broached by me before how I feel about modern comedies and modern humor-not a lot of it tickles my funny bone. I am greatly disappointed as the previous film from the director I thought was hilarious and I just presumed it'd be more of the same here. Unfortunately...
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