Boy (***)

Taika Waititi, whose earlier film, Eagle vs. Shark, a bit like a New Zealand sequel to Napoleon Dynamite, changes things up with this coming-of-age film set in 1984 in a rural Maori community. The eleven-year-old title character (James Rolleston) lives with his cousins—his mother died giving birth to his younger brother—and invents a glamorous history for his absent father, who’s apparently in jail. But then the old man shows up, leading a three-man “gang” and hoping to dig up the buried “treasure” if only he can figure out where it’s buried.

The father, played by the director, is more of an overgrown child than a gangster, and Boy initially accepts him as a cool new playmate. The movie is a drama, but in the father character especially there are at least hints of the goofiness of Eagle vs. Shark. Additionally, while the characters are not well off, there is something appealing about the way they have free run of the town’s landscapes, which include a lonely beach, and a certain self-reliance. Boy’s fascination with Michael Jackson is a reminder of the reach of global culture, yet this place seems a world apart. (For American ears, the accents may be a little tough to follow.) Boy lacks the pathos and depth that would make the film a classic, but it’s a winsome effort from Waititi.

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viewed 4/19/12 7:3 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/19/12

Eagle vs. Shark (***1/4)

If the makers of Napoleon Dynamite had been from New Zealand, this might be the ten-years-later sequel, although writer-director-costar Taika Waititi says he wrote the script a few years ago. The story is told from the view of a shy, awkward woman (Loren Horsley) who, behind her fast-food-chain visor, admires the Napoleonic Jarrod, based on, among other things, their matching moles (ick). Played by Jemaine Clement (costar of HBO’s Flight of the Conchords), Jarrod is more self-confident than she, but more odd and childish. Well-matched video-game skills help this pair forge a relationship.

Waititi places these weird yet ordinary characters in ordinary, even drab, settings. He makes good use of color, but the movie never feels slick. Whereas Napoleon Dynamite somewhat abandons its quirkiness for a fairly typical Hollywood ending, Eagle vs. Shark keeps it real, and is funnier in any case.

In this movie, the characters won’t triumph by being elected school president, or even winning a rematch against a former school tormentor, as Jarrod attempts to hilarious and heartbreaking effect. This is basically a fun, upbeat movie, but the possibility of victory it sets up for the characters is on a more personal level, which is the best most of us can hope for.

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The World’s Fastest Indian (***1/4)

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Anthony Hopkins perfectly plays Burt Munro, a New Zealand eccentric who dreamed of racing his jury-rigged 1920 motorbike on the salt flats of Utah.

The title refers to the forty-year-old motorbike New Zealand crank Burt Munro tinkers with in his garage, not to the crank himself, who’s played by Anthony Hopkins. Munro was a real guy who, four decades ago, lived out his dream of going to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to attempt a speed record on his fragile-looking vehicle. This is another underdog sports story, but the movie puts the brakes on the cliché moments and concentrates on the journey to possible victory. Along the way we get to see some now-faded bits of Americana, like the old Burma Shave signs. Hopkins plays the appealingly eccentric Munro perfectly. Already in his sixties when he attempted his records, Munro/Hopkins looks as frail as his jury-rigged little bike. I knew the story and I still kept worrying he’d crash the bloody thing. Written and directed by Roger Donaldson (The Recruit), The World’s Fastest Indian is a sometimes-funny visual memoir as charming as its subject seems to have been.

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posted 9/17/13