Film review: Bunny and the Bull

Published on Thursday 26 November 2009 19:40

BUNNY AND THE BULL (15) *** DIRECTED BY: PAUL KING STARRING: EDWARD HOGG, SIMON FARNABY, VERÓNICA ECHEGUI

HAVING cut his teeth helming three series of Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt's cult TV hit The Mighty Boosh, writer/director Paul King makes an appropriately oddball feature debut with Bunny and the Bull, a surreal road movie that takes place inside the head of its agoraphobic protagonist. This is Stephen (Edward Hogg), an emotionally withdrawn shut-in who also suffers from a form of obsessive compulsive disorder that has resulted in his London flat being transformed into a mausoleum of memories, replete with box towers full of photos, notes, maps, bus tickets, menus, even used dental floss. They're the remnants of his life before a tragic trip to Europe the previous summer with his boisterous buddy Bunny (Simon Farnaby), an uncouth ladies' man with a grab-the-bull-by-the-horns approach to life that proves tragically literal. It's this trip Stephen recreates in his head, which is the film's cue to plug us into a wonderfully realised vision of Europe constructed from snow globes and paper cut-outs and populated by various Boosh alumni. It's visually stunning and endearingly quirky, but because it never really gels as a story, it remains a film to admire more than love.