Bunny and the Bull (2009)

Director:

Paul King

Writer:

Paul King (screenplay)

Release Date:

27 November 2009 (UK)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

A young shut-in takes an imaginary road trip inside his apartment, based on mementos and memories of a European trek from years before. |

Plot Keywords:

Animal In Title | Character Name In Title

Awards:

2 nominations

Cast

Edward Hogg	...	Stephen
Simon Farnaby	...	Bunny
Verónica Echegui	...	Eloisa
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Richard Ayoade
Julian Barratt
Noel Fielding
Rich Fulcher	...	Captain Crab Phone Voice (voice)
Waleed Khalid	...	Ray
George Newton	...	Polish resturant manager
Margaret Wheldon	...	Tourist
Madeleine Worrall	...	Melanie

Runtime:

101 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Ireland:16 | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

Warp X

Wildly inventive debut

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The boy was on holiday in Rome, having dinner with his parents at a restaurant. An Italian restaurant. When in Rome and all that. The lobster was in the restaurant too, but it wasn't on holiday. Shortly it would be executed by boiling water; a hot corpse to be dissected on the boy's plate. This was unacceptable to the lobster. As the waiter carried the lobster over to the boy's table, the pathetic creature decided to make a break for it. Wriggling out of the waiter's tongs, it smacked head-first into a low-hanging light bulb. The bulb shattered, hot shards raining down on the five-year-old's head. To this day, 'Mighty Boosh' director Paul King won't touch seafood. It's no coincidence that in King's debut feature, Bunny And The Bull, the most revolting European chain restaurant he can conceive of is called 'Captain Crab', serving up slimy portions of barely-dead crustacean.

But back to that lobster for a moment: it doesn't take an armchair psychologist to drum up a corollary between the surreal and often fraught comedy of Bunny, and The Boosh, and that traumatic childhood incident. The plot of Bunny And The Bull does indeed deal with how painful memories can adversely affect our present outlook. If King can't go near shellfish again, his paranoid, agoraphobic creation Stephen 'Bull' Turnbull (played by Edward Hogg) can't seem to leave his Kings Cross flat for fear of something awful happening. This is a man so terrified of the unexpected, and of that which he cannot control, he has turned his dismal flat into a virtual mausoleum, stacking his own pee in jars, "and noting its PH".

The reasons behind his self-incarceration are soon revealed: an ultimately doomed European road trip taken with his toxic best friend Bunny (Simon Farnaby). Initially taking in such genuine museums as The German Museum of Cutlery and the National Shoe Museum of Poland (your laconic tour guide, one Richard Ayoade), Bunny decides his lovesick friend requires more stimulating adventures, and soon they're picking up a sexy Spanish waitress Eloisa (Verónica Echegui), stealing stuffed bears and encountering a barking mad Hungarian tramp called Atilla (Julian Barratt), who much prefers to drink his dog's milk directly from the dog.

Given the presence of the latter, and of a pleasingly restrained Noel Fielding who also cameos here as a booze-sodden matador, the real shocker is that this isn't in fact 'Boosh: The Movie' (which at time of writing, is apparently in the works). This, despite featuring - and apparently in all coincidence - a pale, long-haired man and a hairy Yorkshireman pottering through a surreal hyperverse. (If this were made in the 1960s, Frank Zappa and 'Monkees' creator Bob Rafelson would surely be exec-producing.) Instead, this movie utterly belongs to Hogg and Farnaby, who act out an anarchic and surprisingly touching meditation on male friendship, impotent bravado, and grief. Perhaps unsurprisingly, King's a huge fan of Bruce Robinson's classic, and there are various allusions throughout ("Sure I can't tempt you with one last little drink?" asks Bunny as the mismatched pair bid their farewells). Making the association explicit, the producers have even dubbed this one "Withnail & I for the mentally ill" - as if the latter weren't also conceived in the white heat of a near-nervous collapse. At any rate, as with Withnail, and the comedy of duo Oram and Meeten, there's deeper stuff going here on than just a bunch of stoner-style antics.

All this is played out against part-animated, endlessly inventive handcrafted backdrops, including an underpass made from newspaper, a fairground made from clock parts and a bull made out of cutlery - not to mention a bravura credit sequence, which utilises everything in Stephen's flat from pocket calculators to postage stamps. If the most obvious aesthetic comparisons are to be drawn with the work of Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Terry Gilliam, fans of animation will be reminded of Czech surrealist Jan 'vankmajer, and even Oliver Postgate and FilmFair - responsible for bringing 'Bagpuss', 'The Wombles' and 'Paddington' to life on British televisions during the 1970s.

An equally indelible impression is left by Simon Farnaby's cheerfully disgusting shagger-gambler, who with his second-hand sheepskin coat, and accompanying stench of mid-strength own brand lager resembles some disgraced 1970s polytechnic lecturer, or a younger version of the cult comedian Charlie Chuck. He also looks as if he's carrying at least three varieties of STD - if those STDs happened to be uniquely English ones.