Taika Waititi’s 2016 hit Hunt for the Wilderpeople operates on multiple levels, its blend of odd-couple comedy and adventure nicely sustained. Julian Dennison’s Ricky Baker looks like a wrong’un from the very start, a sullen foster child dismissed by his social worker as “a real bad egg” who no one wants to adopt. Our first glimpse of Uncle Hector (the late Sam Neill) isn’t any more promising, and his appearance behind the brow of a hill carrying the wild boar he’s just shot is one of cinema’s great entrances. Hector keeps his distance while his big-hearted, gregarious wife Bella (Rima Te Wiata) is another matter entirely, a character whose overwhelming goodness can’t help rubbing off on her new charge.
Dennison, in his first film role, nails Ricky’s bafflement at the attention and care showered on him in this rural idyll, a humble hot water bottle a symbol of his new carers’ love. A birthday celebration is memorable as much for Te Wiata’s hastily improvised song (“Happy Birthday” being still under copyright back then) as for the couple’s gift of a dog, which Ricky names Tupac.
When an unexpected tragedy prompts Ricky to head out into the bush, Hector has no choice but to follow him. Rachel House’s menacing social worker Paula (pictured below) is convinced that Hector has kidnapped his adopted son and a manhunt is launched. Watching the streetwise Ricky way out of his depth is hugely entertaining, notably when Hector sends him out to find food while he rests from an injury, Ricky returning hours later with a handful of plants (“I brought salad”). They encounter a trio of dogged but inept bounty hunters, Ricky’s comments to them misconstrued as evidence that he’s been abused by Hector, raising the stakes further.
This was one of Neill’s best roles, and watching his gruff Hector imperceptibly thaw is one of the film’s pleasures. So many lines of Waititi’s screenplay (based on a novel by popular New Zealand author Barry Crump) are quotable, Hector’s summing up of human existence as “one day you’re here, the next day you’re in a bloody box” among my favourites. Ricky too reveals hidden depths, shocked to discover that Hector is functionally illiterate and explaining to him what a haiku is.
Re-released to celebrate its 10th anniversary, Wilderpeople remains a quirky delight. Look out for a heavily bearded Rhys Darby as a colander-wearing conspiracy theorist, plus Waititi’s cameo as a minister delivering the oddest of funeral eulogies. Cinematographer Lachlan Milne makes the landscapes glow, especially in this new 4K print, though bonus features are disappointingly thin on the ground. A brief "Making Of" featurette and even shorter blooper reel don’t amount to much, though a recent Q&A is worth watching for Neill’s contribution, the actor clearly moved by the warm reception he receives and welling up when recalling how the film, though billed as a comedy, is “suffused by grief”.
