Bunny and the Bull (2009)

As a fan of The Mighty Boosh, I'm surprised that it took me so long to get around to watching this film; my girlfriend hating the Boosh probably was part of it but either way I finally got to seeing it recently. The film is a story of a young man who is a recluse and has not left the house in over a year and seems unable to do so in the near future. Closed into a carefully organised prison of his own making, he remembers the last time he left the house – an European road trip with his friend Bunny which involved a Polish tramp, a Spanish bullfighter, a feisty waitress and a massive stuffed bear.The connection to Boosh is apparent not only in the writer/director and small roles for Fielding and Barratt but just in the construct of the film from the very start. It has a certain oddness to the telling and it makes for a surreal story even though it is a simple one if you wrote it down in bullet points. The whole thing is delivered in this semi-real world where animation means reality – and I don't mean in a "Cool World" sort of way but rather in a beautifully seamless way of backgrounds, of little flourishes and generally the design of everything – all having the effect of bringing reality and memory together so that objects often have significance within the presentation. I loved this aspect of the film and it constantly enchanted me with how creative it was. Sadly the overall story didn't quite match up to this and I didn't find myself quite as charmed or tickled by the main thrust of the film – it is OK, but never hilarious nor as clever as I had hoped.This noticeably changes when Fielding and Barratt have their turns in the film. Fielding is fun as the bullfighter, but it is Barratt who really steals the film with his character – a character that is repulsive but yet funny, terrifying but quite enigmatic; he is very funny indeed. Hogg in the lead is a little bit weak but is rather blank slate approach does work. In regards Farnaby I had doubts and continue to have them. He works when the material helps him, but at times he is a bit too basic and lacking in the presence and character that the Boosh duo brought to their roles – OK they had the laughs to help them, but still, Farnaby doesn't totally work for me in this casting. I really liked the spirit and accent of Echegui and I also appreciated seeing Ayoade in a small role.Bunny and the Bull is definitely worth a look if you love the Boosh, because the humour is very much in that ilk and the semi-animated world is really well constructed and delivered. It isn't as brilliant as I had hoped though and I wish it had been funnier and smarter in the latter stages, but it is wonderfully surreal throughout and I enjoyed it quite a lot on that basis.

Paul King worked on The Mighty Boosh, the much loved, surreal British TV show, so I hoped to get some of that in this. But alas not. Really the film is a road trip, one down memory lane as a obsessively compulsive agoraphobic man looks back on a trip through Europe with his best mate.On the trip they encounter a variety of characters including a young Spanish woman with whom he falls for and yet his friend beds. In the end through tragedy the man learns to see life differently and step into the outside world again.The film has so much potential, but it never seems to know what it's trying to be. British comedy is known for often being surreal, odd and quirky and this film tries to be all, yet it also tries to be too surreal, odd and quirky yet too clever, whilst never allowing the audience to engage with it's main characters who are either too placid or too grotesque. It also fails as it is never a serious drama, despite the elements of mental illness nor is it funny in a laugh out loud way or in a darkly comic way, instead you have a film that just drags along.One factor works in the film's favour and that is the production. Using surreal sets and backdrops, a snowscape inside a snow globe or a fairground made out of scrap metal, it is often a little overwhelming, but at times very clever. But at the same time the visual style becomes a little too much and draws away from the story line which may have come out better had the film used less quirk and more convention in telling it's story. Stick to the Might Boosh.More of my reviews at iheartfilms.weebly.com

The DVD for this film states that it stars the creme de la creme of English comedy talent. Wow, is this a depressing claim, i will deal with this first: Richard Ayoade was brilliant in Darth Mehrenghi and Nathan Barley, as was Julian Barrat, here however, although the material for their scenes is somehow clever and original, their 5 minutes on camera stay on the wrong side of a lame 2 minute sketch. Noel Fielding proves finally that he can act but his scene goes nowhere and instead we are left with the rotten yoghurt of English comedy for the majority of the film. Man, they could not have found two trolls with less screen chemistry. If the filmmakers had been actually trying to be obnoxious, became self aware and wrote it into the film i might have understood, I kept waiting for a sense of "this is what we intended". But this never happened because these guys are meant to be likable. Its not just that there performances are weak; they don't do anything which seems like they even enjoy each others presence. Anyway, I feel that this school of English humour has taken the risky freeform agenda of Python and mixed it up with a strange Chris Morris style darkness. The point of Morris is, as I paraphrase from a recent interview, not to do comedy and try and make people laugh, but to be funny accidentally. Well this movie was not funny in the slightest or dark and edgy although it tried to take the "oh the little things make life beautiful" nuance from Amelie and crash it headlong into the hollow grace of Being John Malkovich. The story was self indulgent neurotic brain theatre without a strong enough lead to compel any sympathy from me. Really, the lead Edward Hogg seems like a good actor, but he was given terrible direction from a director clearly obsessed with the visual feastyness of it all. The visuals are clever to an extent. Interiors are generated out of subconscious imagery and exteriors seem far away dreamlike, and it seems like the entire film could have been shot on one set. This I liked and added a nice theatre design touch to a movie. However when it goes over the top, for example with the motion capture models and the computer animated landscapes, I felt like the thing became unwelcoming, and no longer compassionate to its audience: The world we are shown is more ugly than magical, yet somehow we are made to believe that this is some kind of wonderland-Gilliamesq-Quay Brothers- fairy-tale universe that we would want to be a part of. An audience should want to go on the journey the films protagonists undertake, yet their trip was self-inflicted monotony with no silver lining, thus alienating anyone who dared to feel empathy for the films core which is essentially blib bla bloop. 2 stars out of 10 for the condom dispenser joke.

This is the debut effort from director Paul King (Mighty Boosh), advertised as 'Withnail and I for the mentally ill'. This is an attempt to get audiences in, but oversimplifies the film to an extent of misleading the viewers. Yes, it is based on two young men going travelling, however what makes both these films great is their style, and that could not be any more different.'Withnail and I' is famously bleak, portraying the struggling characters in the context of a social-realism drabness. However, stylistically, Bunny and the Bull can compete with the classics in eccentricity; stealing nuggets of genius from directors such as Gondry, Gilliam and Burton. By imitating Gondry's use of set design, theme parks are created from clock workings, and train cartridges from toilet parts. This manages to create stunning visuals along with awe-inspiring animation; but still retains the charm and spark of a low-budget movie.Essentially a road movie, it tells the story of an obsessive-compulsive Stephen Turnbull (Edward Hogg) as he travels around Europe with unlikely friend, Bunny (Simon Farnaby). Over the course of 100 minutes, the cause of Turnbull's crippling agoraphobia is explained with the help of his catalogued mementos of the trip. These are used as jumping-off points into flashback scenes, as shot from his mental illness-addled imagination.While at moments touching, the main problem seemed to be the lack of shots helping us to engage with the two leads. With the plot holding the potential to get an audience gripped and engaged, the acting seemed rigid and confused in places. The titular character, Bunny, is not fully realised, flickering between off-the-wall quirkiness, reminiscent of Seinfeld's Kramer, and a one-dimensional, Northern booze-hound.With cameos from Mighty Boosh's Noel Fielding, playing an unhinged matador, and Julian Barratt as a dog-milk-craving tramp, the expectations are understandable for this to be a feature-length episode of the show. However, the film takes the much loved quirks from first series of Boosh and manages to restrain them; connecting its celebrated vivid imagery with the real world, which allows viewers to connect better with the narrative.While in parts uncomfortable, the state of Turnbull's mental illness slowly dawning, the film action never slows and gives the audience chance to get bored. Not as quick-paced as Boosh, this only serves to help the plot lines form naturally and the film to flourish, highlighting the real star of the film; Paul King.