Film Review: Hitpig!

Hitpig!
Directors: Cinzia Angelini, David Feiss
Aniventure
In Theaters: 11.01

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, one of my biggest non-film-related obsessions was the newspaper comic strip Bloom County by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed. As a very mediocre artist and an aspiring comedy writer, Breathed’s brilliant mix of edginess and whimsy was fuel for my imagination, and for years I got a different volume of his comics every Christmas. It was with this unabashed fondness in mind that I entered Hitpig! with low expectations and high hopes. 

Hitpig (voiced by Jason Sudeikis, Colossal, Ted Lasso) is a pig who was adopted by a “Pet Bounty Hunter” named Big Bertha (Lorraine Ashbourne, Blinded By The Light, I Used To Be Famous), who made him her partner, and their specialty was tracking down runaway animals and returning them to their owners, until she was eaten by a crocodile. Now on his own, Hitpig faces his toughest yet: potentially his last lucrative job yet when a Las Vegas performer knows as The Leapin’ Lord of the Leotard (Rainn Wilson, The Office) hires him to find and return Pickles (Lilly Singh, The Bad Guys, The Muppets Mayhem), a dancing elephant, back Letícia dos Anjos (Annitta), a Brazilian animal rights activist who liberated her. When Hitpig catches up with Pickles, he convinces her that he’s a pygmy elephant who is working with Leticia to get Pickles back to her home in India, fully intending to take her back to Vegas and her captor. At least, that’s the plan, until a bond develops between them and Hitpig must do some serious soul searching.

Hitpig! is adapted from Breathed’s thoroughly wonderful 2008 children’s picture book Pete & Pickles, though it’s done so in much the same way that a hamburger is “adapted” from a cow. The basic themes of friendship and sacrifice, and the very basic similarities between the end of an elephant’s trunk and a pig’s nose remain in tact, along with the name Pickles, and that’s about the extent of it. The simple, sweet source material, an adorable tale about a runaway elephant hiding out at the home of a lonely and cantankerous pig, has been unrecognizably reimagined as high concept action comedy with a convoluted story that plays something like something that Illumination, the studio behind Despicable Me, might churn out. On the major plus side, the delightful character designs by Breathed himself give a far superior visual style, and when you add to that fast pacing, lots of action a few good performances, Hitpig! is reasonably fun. This is impressive when you consider that the screenplay by Dave Rosenbaum and Tyler Werrin (Riverdance: The Animated Adventure), consists of two main elements: animal poop jokes and bad animal puns. When Hitpig does some martial arts moves, he quips, “Get a taste of my world-famous pork chop!” and when a tin pot falls upside down onto his head, he quips, “Now I know what a Spam feels like.” Still, the Hitpig and Pickles dynamic is quite cute, the action is fun and the off-the-wall storyline and wacky world building shares just enough of Bloom County’s sense of silliness (including a reference to the strip’s craziest character) that I found myself breezily entertained throughout, and the pro-animal message is nice to see.

Sudeikis is great, bringing a deadpan delivery, effortless charm and depth to his characterization, getting a few good laughs even without clever dialogue to work with. Singh is appropriately lovable as Pickles, and the underused Ashbourne is quite good as Bertha, with a dignity and warmth that makes for a major highlight of the film.er real life husband, Andy Serkis of Lord of the Rings and Planet of the Apes fame, cameos as a Newscaster. The highly talented Wilson throws himself into the role with gusto, but the shrill character starts out as mildly amusing and quickly wears out his welcome. RuPaul is even worse as a flatulent Polecat, though thankfully Hannah Gadsby (Sex Education) and Charlie Adler (Transformers) fare much better as a Koala and Lobster, respectively.  

Hitpig! is neither great nor terrible, and there are enough disparate elements that it could easily have gone fully in either direction. It’s a prime example of the Hollywood tendency to overdevelop and overmilk a simple idea, cramming in an excess of plot rather than just telling a good story. If you’re a fan of Breathed’s artwork and his more overtly zany side, there’s just enough unique flavor to savor here to make for a guilty pleasure, and the feeling of nostalgia that it brought me was a real treat. The fact remains that as we’ve seen with most major Dr. Suess adaptations, a delectably sweet morsel can turn into too many empty calories and more than a bit of indigestion if you try to make it into a full meal. –Patrick Gibbs

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