Bunny And The Bull

Director Paul King is best known for his work directing The Mighty Boosh, the surreal TV comedy of Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt. Both make appearances in Bunny And The Bull, playing variations on characters they’ve done in the series. But unlike the series, this was written by King himself, and anyone looking for a bit of Booshy fun is going to be sorely disappointed. That said, what we get is an interesting and very dark comedy of two obsessive compulsives who manage to destroy their lives in familiar yet somewhat weird ways.

The core relationship of Bunny and Stephen is interesting, with the boorish oaf /caring friend stereotype fulfilled by Simon Farnaby’s turn as Bunny. It’s not hard to see why Stephen continues to remain friends with Bunny - it’s impossible to get him to leave you alone. And his obliviousness to how he’s hurting the people around him ensures that he remains likeable enough, even as he continues to do incredibly insensitive things to Stephen. And once Eloisa (Veronica Echegui) turns up, the tensions increase as Stephen is smitten but pretends that he isn’t, which Bunny takes as free license to take his shot.

Unfortunately, the fairly interesting main story is unsettled by a lot of unnecessary mugging when Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding turn up. Both major comic talents, they don’t fit as they simply do variations on characters they’ve played in The Mighty Boosh, killing any chance the film had of standing on its own, at least for Boosh fans. They’re funny, but overpower the leads, making their appearance simultaneously enjoyable and slightly disappointing, and leaving the film feeling unbalanced.

The style of Bunny And The Bull is its biggest strength, although it will suffer from comparisons to the more majestic handmade surrealism of Michel Gondry. Everywhere they travel, you are still in Stephen’s lounge room. Snow made of newspaper falls from the sky, clockwork fairgrounds tick their way around and they drive across a fast food chain’s map. It’s all very cute, and does serve to remind us that we’re experiencing the story of a shut-in who hasn’t always been this way.

I really wanted to love Bunny And The Bull but whilst it looks good, the framing of the shots, the lighting, pretty much everything says television, not cinema. It’s got a lot of ambition and it’s fun but It doesn’t make use of the scope it’s been provided with by the big screen.

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