Bunny and the Bull

What makes this film absolutely sublime is the lingering melancholy - faint yet stubbornly persistent - ubiquitous through all the quirky, surreal, and comical sequences. It's never self-indulgent or over-sentimental. All elements, be it emotions, performances, sets, character development, or animation, are well-controlled and contained as a proper English would have it; yet it's radical, outrageous, bold, and sometimes uncomfortably daring. Elegance rises through vulgarity, and (almost unbearable) sadness screams silently. This film is unique, delightful, touching, funny, and yes, wicked. It's not Boosh but fans or otherwise shall be pleasantly surprised.

This 'surreal' comedy plays much like an extended episode of The Mighty Boosh, however, it is far more endearing than this. The story focuses on friends Stephen (Edward Hogg) and Bunny (Simon Farnaby). Stephen is a shut-in who hoards everyday items and mementos in boxes stacked around the house. The two characters go on an imaginary road trip, which is fantasised through memories of past events. This faux-adventure takes them to Spain, where Bunny learns how to be a matador. This is after they meet Spanish seafood restaurant waitress Eloisa (Veronica Echegui), who has quit her job and decided to make the journey back to Spain. After acquiring a vehicle in a crab eating contest, Stephen and Bunny catch up with Eloisa and make that journey happen.

The connection between this and the BBC show The Mighty Boosh, is obvious, as the films writer/director Paul King is involved in directing the shows episodes. The inclusion of Noel Fielding and Julien Barract in small (but highly hilarious) parts heightens this further.

The visual style of the film is reminiscent of the work of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Michel Gondry. King uses the fantasy elements of the journey to create a backdrop of animations made from cardboard and layered paper. In an opening sequence we she Stephen and Bunny making bets in a bookies that looks like a set lifted from an episode of Paddington from the 1970s: that is, two dimensional pencil sketched surroundings.

There is much to like here, the performances of the two main characters are excellent, especially Simon Farnaby, who dresses like a 1970s binman. But for me the stand out character, and giver of the best laughs is Julien Barrats Polish Tramp. In a scene under a motorway flyover, Atilla offers Stephen some milk. "It's dog milk". This is offered in a bottle, but Atilla drinks directly from the dogs teet. Stephen gets a hard-on from the dog, Atilla replies "You want f**k my wife?"

In the closing sequences we get a beautiful Jeunetesque payoff, beauty becomes rhythm. Without words, the visuals play. The mechanical bull becomes the person. Metal to skin, skin to muscle, but death is ultimate when fantasy is mistaken for reality. Well, that's what I wrote in my notes. I'd had a few drinks whilst I watched it. In conclusion, a beautifully crafted film visually, with many laugh-out-loud moments, and some endearing characters.

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"Bunny and the Bull" is possibly the most visually inventive film I've seen in my life. It begins with a title credit sequence with the camera gracefully flowing from object to object in a small room, like in Jeunet-Caro's classic "Delicatessen". It stays in that same Delicatessenesque vein while we meet our hero, an agoraphobe who evidently hasn't left his apartment in 1 year, and then the real fun starts...

Our hero "Stephen" (Edward Hogg) stares at random objects in his meticulously cluttered apartment, and each object triggers a flashback. Each flashback is vividly adorned in scenery relating to the object that triggered it. For example, his first flashback comes from a box of fast food takeout. The flashback scene contains the actors and some real props but they are sitting inside an animated cardboard box. Occasionally cars will pass by the window outside, similarly animated cardboard cutouts.

I found this visual style to be both eye-catching and wonderfully creative. Animation is very old school, using tricks of stop motion photography, hand drawings, confetti for snow, and projection screens showing dreamlike landscapes behind the action. It reminded me of the work of Michel Gondry ("The Science of Sleep", "Eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind") or Tim Burton's old school stuff ("Nightmare Before Christmas", "Edward Scissorhands", "Peewee's Big Adventure") but ramped up on steroids. Everything is very vivid and pleasing to the eye with cartoonish colors and simplicity surrounding what ultimately ends up being a very complex story.

The actors present a fabulous dynamic with "Stephen" being the obsessively uptight dweeb who courts a girl for 3 years before working up the nerve to say he likes her, while his best friend "Bunny" (Simon Farnaby) is the antithesis: a devil-may-care hedonist who can bed any girl in under 2 minutes it seems. The movie is a series of flashbacks unraveling a strange adventure that the two of them had together, mostly silly escapades culminating in a life-altering event that just might alter your life as well.

Something I found particularly funny was the way our hero is an animal lover, and a very outspoken one at that. He has a hilarious way of turning almost any situation awkward by expressing his views, almost like a "Debbie Downer" character. But if you're an animal lover you may find yourself cheering him on. For example, in one scene they are talking to a would-be matador who is relating the joy and elegance of bullfighting. He says something like "It is not a fight. It is a dance. A beautiful dance as only man and beast can do." And our hero Stephen fires back "Really? I thought it was all about stabbing a defenceless animal in the back of the neck until he dies." And the matador says, "It is a peculiar dance, I'll give you that." Great sarcastic & deadpan humor along with hilariously awkward situations pepper this film throughout, making it fun from beginning to end. And as I alluded earlier, there is ultimately some great depth and power to this seemingly whimsical flick.

If you're a fan of the directors I mentioned above, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Michel Gondry & Tim Burton... and I'll throw in Charlie Kaufman & Spike Jonze ("Being John Malkovich", "Synecdoche NY") and maybe Terry Gilliam ("Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas") then do not hesitate to see this wonderfully bizarre flick. In over 500 films, I've only given out about 20 perfect "10" ratings, but this film truly deserves the honor.

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.

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.