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“Hunt for the Wilderpeople” (2016)

Drama/Comedy/New Zealand

Running Time: 101 minutes

Director: Taika Waititi

Featuring: Sam Neil, Julian Dennison, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne and Oscar Kightley

Ricky Baker: I’ll never stop running!

Paula: Yeah, and I’ll never stop chasing you – I’m relentless, I’m like the Terminator.

Ricky Baker: I’m more like the Terminator than you!

Paula: I said it first; you’re more like Sarah Connor, and in the first movie too, before she could do chin-ups.

Look I am going to be honest and say I have arrived late to the Taika Waitit party, and only just received my copy of this film to review. Being the reactionary old man that I am I proceeded to put off watching it, thinking it could never live up to the hype that has followed this film worldwide since its release – but, this is just one of the best films I have seen all year, as simple as that.

I am not going to bore you with why you should watch this but you should watch and own it and re-watch it.

I will say I loved the homage to Barry Crumps Toyota adverts from years gone by, just excellent and it was great to see a true homage and not a rip-off.

The other thing is the performances that are given by all with my MVP going to Rima Te Wiata, the time she is in this film are some of the best of the film and of NZ cinema – Rima is the real gold in this film and I would love to see her recognized in some form.

Taika has done a great job here and his talent is obvious from all his other projects and I simply cannot wait to see how he will handle a film with a much larger budget and one with a built in audience the size of his next film “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017).

Special Features:

Audio commentary track with Taika Waititi, Sam Neill and Julian Dennison

Featurette

Bloopers

Interviews

Trailers

 If you enjoyed this try:

 “Boy” (2012)

“What we do in the Shadows” (2014)