Animation
Chickenhare And The Secret Of The Groundhog (PG)
Review: The opening visual gag in director Benjamin Mousquet’s sprightly sequel to his 2022 animated fantasy Chickenhare And The Hamster Of Darkness is a resourceful skunk turning her back on a swarm of angry bees and neutralising the winged throng with a toxic outburst from her anal glands. Fart jokes are alive, well and wafted more than once in Chickenhare And The Secret Of The Groundhog so take a big whiff.
The half-hare half-chicken explorer (voiced by Jordan Tartakow) embarks on a daredevil treasure hunt for the Holy Spork in the company of acrobatic skunk Meg (Laila Berzins) and wise Galapagos tortoise Abe (Joey Lotsko). The trio stumble upon the glittering prize only for Meg’s one-time associate, scheming lynx Crolloq (Odessa Lurlean), to swoop in with her tiny hench-chameleons, Miggie (Dino Andrade) and Rolf (Todd Haberkorn), to try and steal the prize. Chickenhare and co return to the kingdom of Featherbeard to celebrate with the eponymous hero’s adopted father, King Peter (Wally Wingert). Triumph turns to despair when one of the archivists, Gina (Xanthe Huynh), reveals that she is Chickenhare’s long-lost sister and a tree of life that sustains their bloodline’s island home is under threat. “You’re our only hope,” implores Gina.
The only way to save their unique kind from extinction is to track down the fabled Groundhog With the Backward-Facing Face, who can reverse the flow of time. Chickenhare, Gina, Meg and Abe are roused into immediate action but the quartet are propelled onto divergent paths. Chickenhare and Gina confront the ghosts of the past, Meg resolves her feelings for Crolloq after an ill-fated previous quest to locate the Fountain Of Middle Age and Abe encounters strange beasties in The Neverending Jungle.
Chickenhare And The Secret Of The Groundhog is a lively escapade with blatant nods to Indiana Jones, especially in the opening set piece. Hand-animated 2D flashbacks provide a pleasing contrast to colourful 3D computer-animated visuals and Mousquet maintains a brisk pace that doesn’t permit much time to dwell on narrative inconsistencies such as clawed and pawed protagonists being casually sucked down a giant plughole with a deluge of scalding hot liquid that threatened to broil them to death only a few seconds earlier.
Screenwriters Dave Collard and Chris Grine playfully populate this convoluted escapade with droll supporting characters (Queen Ingrid the Indecisive), quixotic locations (The Isle Of Idle Hands) and nonsensical artefacts that may never be found, and for good reason (The Boomerang That Never Returns). Wholesome life lessons about loyalty, honour and familial ties punctuate the gentle family-friendly humour and potent skunk eruptions. The Minions-like Piggies from the first film return to wreak hammy havoc on a grand scale. It’s all pleasantly diverting hogwash.
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Horror
Pinocchio Unstrung (18)
Review: Rhys Frake-Waterfield, writer-director of the deplorable Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood And Honey and its bloodthirsty sequel, trades gallons of gore in the Hundred Acre Wood – as never imagined by AA Milne – for a similarly brutal reworking of Carlo Collodi’s 19th-century fantasy. If you wish upon a star for a relentless slasher horror shot using impressive practical effects and puppets then Pinocchio Unstrung delivers with aplomb. Behind-the-scenes footage embedded in the end credits reveals the filmmaking ingenuity that reduces numerous members of cast to squelchy morasses of torn flesh, severed limbs and glistening innards.
A nifty shadow puppetry prologue establishes Geppetto (Richard Brake) as legal guardian of his young grandson, James (Cameron Bell), after the boy is orphaned. The traumatised tyke subsequently loses best friend Zach (Elliott Spilling) to cancer and Geppetto vows to create “something that will never say goodbye, something that will never belong to death”.
In his basement, Geppetto carves a living wooden boy named Pinocchio (voiced by Jude Evan Lloyd) from an enchanted tree as an eternal friend for James. The grateful grandson plays with Pinocchio behind closed doors but the puppet’s moral compass is compromised by one of Geppetto’s discarded creations, Wood Mother (Emma Tate), who asserts that it is Pinocchio’s duty to stop anyone from harming James: “Protecting your brother, that’s real love.”
Consequently, anyone who dares to threaten James is marked for violent retribution. A vicious Cricket (Robert Englund) poisons Pinocchio’s ear – “The world is full of rot you need to stop!” – to ensure the puppet holds fast to his murderous path. As the body count escalates, everyone in James’s orbit becomes potential collateral damage including close friends Dudley (Jack Art Gray) and Mia (Jessica Balmer).
According to anthropomorphic teddy Winnie-the-Pooh: “A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside.” Friendship is at the blackened heart of Pinocchio Unstrung and in its quieter moments – the few there are – Frake-Waterfield’s picture achieves a surprising amount of raw emotion. Young cast work incredibly hard to prevent leaden dialogue from teetering over into risibility.
Alas, restraint isn’t a core component of the writer-director’s vocabulary and he doesn’t miss an opportunity to orchestrate maximum carnage. A seemingly benign visit to a gym becomes a preposterous bloodbath and the titular antihero literally pulls strings in the most grotesque fashion. The script appropriates the framework of Collodi’s source novel – the puppet’s nose still grows when he lies – but Frake-Waterfield gleefully warps the mischievous marionette’s misadventures. Here, Pinocchio deliberately tells fibs to create the perfect tapered weapon to slide into a victim’s fleshy orifice. It’s a rare instance when wooden acting is desirable.
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