The plot: Teenager Adam (Pappy Faulkner) misses his father
(Christopher L. Parson), who was presumed dead after being chased down by
scientists led by Wallace. However, when Adam by chance finds that his father
is still alive, he’s more than just alive: He’s Bigfoot! As Adam reconnects
with his father and his forest friends, Wallace is hot on their trail to
capture Bigfoot and discover the cure for baldness.
The voice acting is pretty bland across the board. Faulkner
as our focal point character is just okay, not so unengaging that he drags the
film down but not so engaging that he makes his presence in the film worth
sitting through. Parson as the titular Bigfoot works as the comforting father
figure, and while he may not that much of a character to speak of for most of
the film, his involvement in the final act shows the most bizarrely complex bit
of characterisation that has ever come out of an nWave production. It is
genuinely impressive, if ultimately underutilised overall.
The actors playing
the talking animals, because of course they’d be here as well, are all fine but
don’t really stand out all that much. Oh, and the guy voicing the big bad
Wallace (whose name I could not find online, despite my best efforts, so
apologies) is clearly trying for deliciously evil villainy but doesn’t have the
energy or the menace to back that up.
As the third nWave Pictures film I’ve seen so far, I’m
becoming increasingly convinced that this company puts all its effort into a
single thing: Chase scenes. The running scenes with Adam and Bigfoot are very
fluid and well-captured, and the scene with him being chased down by a trio of
school bullies works along the same grounds. Unfortunately, fast pacing is
pretty much all this film has to offer as the rest of the animation is rather
pedestrian. The texture quality, particularly with the characters, is very
plastic and rubbery, the kind of visuals you would expect from a ‘clearly made
for kids and only kids’ production like this. That on its own is fine, except
pretty much everything on screen is rendered the same way, from the Bigfoot’s
home in the forest to the admittedly decent design for HairCo’s headquarters.
It’s all so obvious that it can be difficult to get too invested in, even on
the basis of appealing to a younger audience.
This is made worse by the story structure, which barely has
anything like actual story to work with. Kid discovers something weird about
himself, runs off to find his father, they goof around in the woods for a bit
and then the plot actually kicks in during the final act; that’s pretty much
all we have to work with. For something that banks on father-son connections to
carry its drama(?), not that much is shown to make us care about this coupling,
let alone want to see it continue beyond the film’s scope. I’ll admit that the
jokes with the talking animals and their conversations with Adam aren’t nearly
as irritating as similar scenes from Robinson Crusoe: The Wild Life, but it’s
not as if wallpaper paste is going to taste any better than actual faeces;
there’s still better things to consume out there.
Because of the very
business-casual approach to its own story, this feels less like an actual film
and more an extended distraction for its target demographic. While I appreciate
this being far less offensive in many areas than other family films I’ve
covered on here, I’m still not buying that kids want to watch something this
uninvolved.
And honestly, by the very nature of its plot, this should be better than it is. Bigfoot and
his son have to fight a mad scientist who wants to create a cure for baldness;
this is the kind of cracky high-concept idea that should be in my wheelhouse.
Hell, I grew up watching a film called The Peanut Butter Solution, which was
also about rapidly-growing hair and psychotic villains who wanted to get their
hands on it; it is gloriously insane. For the majority of the film, it feels like the people at work
here don’t really get just how much potential that core idea has… and then the
final act kicks in, where Adam and his animal friends have to break into
HairCo. From here, not only do the visuals start to gain some points in terms
of spectacle, the filmmakers also start to have a bit more fun with what they
have on hand.
The action scenes, for a start, show a certain understanding of
how to make ridiculousness palatable, what with the company’s armed security
force trying to fight off a rabbit holding a tazer gun. While the villain only
ends up becoming more ineffectual as all this goes on, having an almost
revolving door policy with who is kept captive at the lab, it also leads to
that weird dramatic moment with Bigfoot. It is proper strange that this kind of
pathos is in a film like this, but honestly, that notion of what a person is
willing to do to protect their family is greatly appreciated and works
remarkably well. I just wish this was all attached to a film that was more
consistent.
All in all, this is squarely in the middle in terms of what
I’ve seen from nWave. It’s not as aggressively annoying as The Wild Life, but
it’s not as pleasantly distracting as The House Of Magic. While the animation
continues to show what the company is best at (energetic chase sequences), the
acting combined with the animation outside of those scenes isn’t something I’m
likely to recall in any great detail after this. That said, the final reel is a
major step up, featuring not only some nice visuals but also a disarmingly
emotional turn that I don’t think anyone
would have seen coming from a film like this. It has its good points, but quite
frankly, it’s too little too late for this thing.
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