← Back to Reviews
in
Bunny and the Bull (2009)

You are spared the rant I was going to go on about the impossibility of finding a cinema that bothers to show smaller/independent films by the discovery made by one of my friends on Sunday afternoon that the charming Prince Charles cinema off Leicester Square was showing the film we wanted to see, Bunny and the Bull. Downstairs screen, £5. Bargain, I must say.
Bunny and the Bull, written and directed by Paul King, is a delightfully odd road trip comedy which opens with Stephen Turnbull (Edward Hogg, endearing in the lead role) attempting to leave the flat he hasn’t left for a year after his carefully stock piled freeze dried vegetarian lasagnes unexpectedly go off. Leaving the flat is difficult for Stephen and we find out why in a series of flashbacks to a disastrous road trip round Europe Stephen undertook with his friend Bunny (Simon Farnaby) the year before.
Stephen is a nervous, organised vegetarian who enjoys visiting shoe museums, at odds with the bon vivant Bunny, a self-centred gambler who likes to take the bull by the horns. Literally. Stephen falls for a spiky Spanish beauty (Veronica Echegui) he meets in a Captain Crab restaurant in Poland – but does he have the balls to go after what he wants, or will Bunny get there first?
This is a very funny film, full of surreal details. Along the way Stephen and Bunny encounter a succession of oddball characters including a dog-bothering tramp played by Julian Barratt (who has worked with King on cult TV comedy series The Mighty Boosh). The tramp scene was a little too gross-out for me, I have to say, it wouldn’t have been out of place in Borat. There is also an appearance by the other half of the Boosh, Noel Fielding, as a deluded Matador who, in possibly the film’s funniest sequence, attempts to train Bunny as a bullfighter in a car park using a shopping trolley with horns.
Funny as it is, though, there are also some quite poignant moments. Stephen’s obvious mental illness, the reasons for it and the way he attempts to overcome his fears and compulsions are really quite touching and lend an extra depth to the film.
The look of the film is the real highlight. Wonderfully quirky there is a mix of home-made seeming sets, animation and more traditional scenery. All the flashbacks are triggered by household objects – postcards, a takeaway box – and these objects form the sets for the scenes on the road trip – newspaper trees, bottle crate walls, even a fairground made from clock parts in one gorgeous sequence.
I think Paul King has done a really good job on his first feature film, it’s good-looking, it’s quirky, it’s thoughtful and it’s still funny. I only wish there were more films like this, and more cinemas which would show them.
4/5

You are spared the rant I was going to go on about the impossibility of finding a cinema that bothers to show smaller/independent films by the discovery made by one of my friends on Sunday afternoon that the charming Prince Charles cinema off Leicester Square was showing the film we wanted to see, Bunny and the Bull. Downstairs screen, £5. Bargain, I must say.
Bunny and the Bull, written and directed by Paul King, is a delightfully odd road trip comedy which opens with Stephen Turnbull (Edward Hogg, endearing in the lead role) attempting to leave the flat he hasn’t left for a year after his carefully stock piled freeze dried vegetarian lasagnes unexpectedly go off. Leaving the flat is difficult for Stephen and we find out why in a series of flashbacks to a disastrous road trip round Europe Stephen undertook with his friend Bunny (Simon Farnaby) the year before.
Stephen is a nervous, organised vegetarian who enjoys visiting shoe museums, at odds with the bon vivant Bunny, a self-centred gambler who likes to take the bull by the horns. Literally. Stephen falls for a spiky Spanish beauty (Veronica Echegui) he meets in a Captain Crab restaurant in Poland – but does he have the balls to go after what he wants, or will Bunny get there first?
This is a very funny film, full of surreal details. Along the way Stephen and Bunny encounter a succession of oddball characters including a dog-bothering tramp played by Julian Barratt (who has worked with King on cult TV comedy series The Mighty Boosh). The tramp scene was a little too gross-out for me, I have to say, it wouldn’t have been out of place in Borat. There is also an appearance by the other half of the Boosh, Noel Fielding, as a deluded Matador who, in possibly the film’s funniest sequence, attempts to train Bunny as a bullfighter in a car park using a shopping trolley with horns.
Funny as it is, though, there are also some quite poignant moments. Stephen’s obvious mental illness, the reasons for it and the way he attempts to overcome his fears and compulsions are really quite touching and lend an extra depth to the film.
The look of the film is the real highlight. Wonderfully quirky there is a mix of home-made seeming sets, animation and more traditional scenery. All the flashbacks are triggered by household objects – postcards, a takeaway box – and these objects form the sets for the scenes on the road trip – newspaper trees, bottle crate walls, even a fairground made from clock parts in one gorgeous sequence.
I think Paul King has done a really good job on his first feature film, it’s good-looking, it’s quirky, it’s thoughtful and it’s still funny. I only wish there were more films like this, and more cinemas which would show them.
4/5