Bunny and the Bull
Tragedy never really enters The Mighty Boosh world – it is too wacky, too detached from reality for that – but Bunny and the Bull is as moving as it is funny.

It has long been the case in the world of movie promotion that the success of a filmmaker’s past work is far more significant than the quality (or lack of quality) of his or her current release. To know this you only have to walk down the poster-clad tunnels of the London Underground and count the number of film posters that gleefully proclaim to passing commuters that they are “from the makers of” some box-office hit of a few years ago (usually, it seems, Superbad). What to do, however, when the film in question is the director’s first? Well, that was not a problem that Bunny and the Bull’s promotion company had to face. As will be plastered all over every poster and trailer from now until its release, Bunny and the Bull is the first foray into feature films for Mighty Boosh director Paul King.

It was always inevitable that Bunny and the Bull would be overshadowed by its association with the phenomenally successful cult TV show. Inevitable, also, that every review (including this one) would draw comparisons between the two. Trumpeting the link seems to make good, common commercial sense, after all, because plonking Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding’s faces on the poster (despite the fact they only have cameo roles) instantly adds a dash of glamour to a film that would otherwise have passed under the radar completely.

I wonder though, whether the association will put off as many people as it will attract. I count myself a big Boosh fan, but, after a disappointing third series and Noel Fielding’s over-exposure on panel-shows over the last few years, I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels more than a little Booshed out.

Thank goodness then, that this little gem of a film is so much more than a Mighty Boosh spinoff. Much of the art direction will be familiar to fans of the show, with knowingly clunky, low-fi sets, often haphazardly made up of everyday objects. But while in The Mighty Boosh they simply contribute to the general air of surreality, in Bunny and the Bull King’s odd-ball sets are determined by an intriguing premise. The film is set entirely inside the house of the agoraphobic Stephen Turnbull (Edward Hogg), who recalls through a series of flashbacks a road trip he took a year ago with his best friend, the gambling-addicted booze-hound Bunny (Simon Farnaby). Having not left the flat since, Stephen mentally reconstructs the journey across Europe using all of the objects that surround him. King introduces the idea subtly, with Stephen gazing into a photograph (an age-old flashback technique). But soon things get more surreal, with Stephen triggering a flashback by staring not into a photograph, but a snow globe, and before you know it King’s characters are travelling through bleak papier-mâché landscapes, train carriages constructed of toilet parts and funfairs made out of the inner workings of a clock.

It is a wonderful idea, and one that allows King to unleash the full extent of his vivid imagination, without it ever feeling gratuitous or over-the-top. While The Mighty Boosh influence is clear, King is more restrained than he has been in the past. Stylistically, Bunny and the Bull feels more akin to the subtler whimsy of Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep than the mad-cap mayhem of The Mighty Boosh. It marks a new-found maturity to King’s direction, which extends to the screenplay and the film as a whole. Stephen and Bunny’s relationship, for example, is deceptively complex and in its abusiveness carries a tragic undercurrent reminiscent of Withnail and I.

Tragedy never really enters The Mighty Boosh world – it is too wacky, too detached from reality for that – but Bunny and the Bull is as moving as it is funny. While Stephen’s agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive nature are used as sources of comedy, the film is also punctuated with stark reminders that the surreal world he creates is due to his mental illness. You laugh less and less at Stephen as the film progresses and it becomes apparent just how profoundly lonely and depressed he is. Bunny and the Bull, as off-beat and surreal as it is, is a very human film.

It means that Barratt and Fielding’s cameos feel slightly at odds with the rest. Both provide the most obvious laugh-out-loud moments, with Barratt as a tramp with a penchant for dog-milk and Fielding as a wonderfully over-the-top matador. Richard Ayoade (of IT Crowd fame) must also get a mention for his hilariously dead-pan turn as tour-guide of the Polish Shoe Museum. It’s difficult to criticise the film for it, because Barratt, Fielding and Ayoade are just so good, but maybe that’s the problem: their comedy is so distinctive that you are momentarily brought out of the story that King has so carefully constructed.

As a result, Bunny and the Bull feels a little disjointed and unbalanced. But the film King set out to make was never meant to be super-slick and its imperfections do nothing to take away from its over-all charm. Like the sets that adorn the film throughout, Bunny and the Bull has a cobbled-together feel that is refreshing amongst all the polished, big-budget comedies that saturate the cinema. Barratt and Fielding’s presence means that it will never entirely escape its association with The Mighty Boosh, but the film has more than enough substance to stand on its own.

An imaginative, subtle and surprisingly moving film, Bunny and the Bull will be loved by Boosh fans and non-Boosh fans alike.