Ricky (Julian Dennison, left) and Hec (Sam Neill) share an effortlessly cranky rapport.
In Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Ricky Baker is a 12-year-old juvenile delinquent who has been sent to live with a couple deep in the wilds of New Zealand. After he runs away from his foster home, events spiral out of control, causing Ricky and his foster father — a grizzled mountain man — to become the focus of a nationwide manhunt.
The boy is a wannabe gangster with a flair for misdemeanors. The old man would rather be left alone. Wilderpeople is not the first movie in which a curmudgeon reluctantly becomes a father figure, nor will it be the last. But writer-director Taika Waititi tells the story spectacularly, deftly avoiding clichés.
Shaking off the hand-held documentary qualities that worked so well in his previous movie, the brilliant vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows, Waititi locks his camera down to give us an old-fashioned odd-couple comedy.
The two heroes share an effortlessly cranky rapport. After a 40-year career as a dramatic actor, Sam Neill finally gets to prove his flair for comedy as the irascible foster dad Hec, and young co-star Julian Dennison holds his own as the hip-hop- and haiku-spouting Ricky. The biggest laughs, though, come from Rachel House as the delusional gung-ho social worker on their trail.
The movie’s clockwork-perfect timing is more reminiscent of the British comedies of Edgar Wright (Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) than the modern American style of filmed improvisations. Waititi knows how to use the camera and the editing room to amplify the comedy, and to drop dramatic scenes into the action without throwing off the tone of the movie.
Waititi nudges his story just close enough to farce that the audience is able to forgive the more preposterous aspects. It does stumble toward the end when the manhunt unexpectedly turns into a car chase. But after 90 minutes of watching a model comedy, I’m not going to complain when a 12-year-old gets his Mad Max on.
