InkBlog

Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi’s early paean to the strength and resilience of kids is tender and funny

Now that New Zealand’s Taika Waititi has hit the big league directing Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok, his second film, 2010’s Maori coming-of-age comedy Boy, is finally released in the UK. It’s a disarmingly lovely, big-hearted film, and hilarious in places.

Like Waititi’s 2016 indie hit Hunt for the Wilderpeople, it’s a paean to the strength and resilience of kids, though in its raw and less polished way it’s a little less corny. Set in 1984, Boy (James Rolleston) is a bright, full-of-beans 11-year-old with a lovely open face. Boy hero worships his dim-witted criminal dad (Waititi, giving a dynamite comic performance, like a biker Ali G, with a mullet and crap prison tattoos).

It’s heartbreakingly sad watching Boy’s illusions shatter as he begins to see his father for the cringeworthy immature man-child he is. And with a level of emotional realness missing from most quirky indie comedies, Waititi lets in the thought that, in this deprived rural community, a promising kid like Boy might grow up to be a man like his dad. A tender and funny film; it deserves to be seen.

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