Hunt for the Wilderpeople

What We Do in the Shadows main-man Taika Waititi delivers another blast of New Zealand comedy gold with a warm-hearted and utterly ludicrous chase movie.

Ricky (Julian Dennison) is moved from the big city to the sticks by the state in the grouchy shape of social worker Paula (Rachel House) and her police minder Andy (Oscar Kightley). Ricky is enthusiastically welcomed to farm life by Bella (Rima Te Wiata), and less enthusiastically tolerated by her gruff husband Hector (Sam Neill). Once Ricky stops trying to run away, and not getting very far, he settles in to this last chance foster home. But then tragedy strikes and he runs away into the Bush rather than be institutionalised. Hec pursues to drag him home, but a series of unfortunate events leave them on the run, pursued by self-righteous hunters, Paula and Andy, and the entire forces of the media and law and order of the island. And all that is before they encounter Psycho Sam (Rhys Darby)…

Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Barry Crump’s novel is a visual delight. At times, such as Paula’s listing of Ricky’s previous misdemeanours and some of the action beats, it feels like Edgar Wright is directing the comedy is so visually driven. Indeed as Waititi builds and builds in his finale, things become so hysterically overblown that it feels like the end of The Blues Brothers. But there’s also a rich spread of verbal comedy from Ricky mangling words like ‘Majestical’, and Paula and Rick arguing over who is Sarah Connor and who the Terminator in their relentless pursuit through the Bush, to Waititi’s delirious cameo as an impressive clergyman to rank beside Peter Cook’s in The Princess Bride, and a jaw-droppingly sustained sequence of misunderstood statements by Ricky about Hec that lands Hec in the most serious of hot water imaginable.

Scott Pilgrim died a horrible death at cinemas, if you don’t see this treat in the cinema you can’t complain when the multiplexes are full of Melissa McCarthy dreck.

5/5

The Heat

Director Paul Feig reunites with his Bridesmaids star Melissa McCarthy for a female buddy-cop movie that’s short on laughs but still better than The Internship.

Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) is a prim and proper FBI Agent who specialises in humiliating her co-workers with displays of her deductive genius. Her despairing boss Hale (Demian Bichir) sends her to a knotty case in Boston as a test. If she can manage to not alienate her co-workers while cracking the case he’ll consider her for a plum promotion, otherwise… Unfortunately for Ashburn the first Boston suspect she wants to interrogate, drug-lord Julian (Michael McDonald), brings with him an obnoxious arresting officer Mullins (Melissa McCarthy). The foul-mouthed Mullins volubly prefers brute force and ignorance to Ashburn’s Quantico-honed subtlety and reconnaissance. She also brings to the case a possible inside man, her deadbeat brother Jason (Michael Rapaport), recently released from prison and being recruited by Julian’s associate Adam (Taran Killam). Can Ashburn and Mullins work together and overcome their personal issues?

Bridesmaids was a curiously depressing film that relentlessly showed Kristen Wiig’s character defeated by life and yet expected audience cheers for the Little Miss Sunshine-aping end which solved only one of her many problems. Thankfully The Heat isn’t that infuriating, as, despite being written by Parks & Rec’s Katie Dippold, it feels like a thriller retouched as a comedy. Tony Hale and Kaitlin Olson pop up for lengthy and meandering scenes that completely waste their comedic talents. It’s hard not to notice that the comedy steps up a notch when Bill Burr and Nate Corddry appear as yet more Mullins siblings; and you suspect they improvised some of their cross-talking madness. Indeed the very deliberate delivery of the initially incomprehensible line “Ah you or ah you not a nahc?” to Ashburn is hands-down the funniest moment in the entire film.

Marlon Wayans is decent as Ashburn’s subordinate Levy, but the great Bichir is shockingly underused. Dan Bakkedahl’s albino DEA Agent Craig is the butt of an uncomfortable vein of crude humour, and that’s before the finale employs the wrong note of 21 Jump Street’s finale without its saving absurdity. Russell T Davies gave Billie Piper the line ‘Ooh, can you smell the testosterone in here?’ in Doctor Who, and that sexism has popped up endlessly and tiresomely in discussions of banking culture. I’ve longed for a character to rant about oestrogen in the same manner to expose the sexism of the trope, so it’s infuriating that Dippold has Agent Craig do just that; but by making him a deeply unsympathetic character subtly justify the corresponding sexist trope. It’s hard to know what to say about a central pairing whose bond is based on Ashburn learning to curse. I watched McCarthy play Sookie for 7 seasons of Gilmore Girls; she’s better than this, but this apparently is where the career is.

The Heat suggests that there’s a true gulf opening up in American comedy between the school of Rogen & Hill and unfunny people.