Amazon Prime Video may have its own Lord of the Rings series, The Rings of Power but it has just added a 2016 movie that I think truly captures the feeling of wandering through the beautiful New Zealand scenery better than Middle Earth itself. It's hilarious to boot too.
I'm talking about Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a Taika Waititi joint that will have you crying laughing and then on the verge of genuine tears within the space of a couple of minutes. Jurassic Park legend Sam Neil stars, but his character is the only dinosaur on screen.
When his wife passes away, Neil's cold 'uncle' Hector looks to be unfit for the continued fostering of wannabe gangster Ricky (a superb Julian Dennison) and the boy is set to be relocated by child services. Ricky does what any teenage boy would do, run away from home. In his rescue attempt, Hector and Ricky end up stranded in the New Zealand bush and thanks to an unfortunate misreading of the situation, the authorities are on their tail.
Waititi's typical deadpan Kiwi humour is rife throughout this story (especially when he appears on screen) and works brilliantly, but this is really a tale of our two leads. It's a joy watching Ricky and Hector develop a surrogate father-son relationship and finally open up to each other. With a 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating, I don't need to tell you how just how well the movie balances these two elements, and if you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it for free.
Prime Video and its free service Freevee have been making a strong case amongst the best streaming services recently, with it also adding Women Talking, the most powerful movie I've seen in years, last month. If you're looking for a similar flavour of comedy, Disney+ has the excellent What we do in the Shadows, a TV series based on Waititi's film of the same name.
