A- | A foster kid and his adoptive father hide in the New Zealand forest from child services. Directed by Taika Waititi Starring Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, and Rachel House Review by Jon Kissel |
The family-friendly adventure gets a modern update with Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Waititi’s fourth film and easily his best gives him a larger budget, but large within the context of New Zealand independent cinema. For a mere $7.5 million, Waititi creates a kinder Goonies and a funnier Stand By Me, the equivalent of an 80's Amblin film in a setting outside of American suburbia. By this point in his career, Waititi has honed his golden Simpsons ratio of 90% comedy and 10% pathos and is about to cash a big check from Marvel, all while demonstrating a creative strength behind the camera that makes his film look more expensive than it is. His transition away from New Zealand micro-budgets and into major commercial and critical cinema has yielded mixed results. The fulcrum of Hunt For the Wilderpeople is the height of one phase of his filmmaking career that later phases are measured against, and come up short.
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