by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Alisha Weir, Gemma Arterton, Sean Bean, Stephen Graham
Intro:
… a fun and heart-warming romp …
In 2013, Spanish animator Pedro Solís released a short film called Cuerdas (or Strings en Inglés). The story of a young girl befriending a boy with cerebral palsy at school, it was inspired by Solís’ observations of his own children, right down to what might be the most heartbreaking dedication attached to any piece of film in “To my son Nicolas; I wish you had never inspired this story”. While it fell into certain pitfalls regarding disability representation on film (and naturally, that means it holds Guinness World Records for how many awards it got), the end result was a remarkably tender and eye-watering showing of empathy and understanding.
Buffalo Kids, Pedro Solís’ feature-length debut (co-directing with Cuerdas’ DP Juan Jesús García Galocha), is in many ways an expansion of Cuerdas’ mission statement. Like that film, it’s also the story of a young girl named Mary (Abigail’s Alisha Weir) who befriends a disabled boy named Nick, and it also treats his condition and indeed him as a character not as a mere prop for audience sympathy, but his own person with feelings, dreams, and connections with others. In quite a few important ways, it even upgrades on the short film’s empathetic wavelength, doing away with its unfortunately voyeuristic framing with a single line of dialogue about how Nick doesn’t need to talk. Non-verbal acceptance like this shouldn’t be such a shining rarity.
But disability rep is ultimately only a small part of the film’s core messaging, and indeed the scope of the film overall. Moving from the Spanish schoolyard of the original, this is an adventurous trek across the American Frontier circa the late 19th-century, with Mary and her brother Tom (Conor MacNeill) as Irish orphans trying to find their uncle Niall, with wheelchair-using Nick along for the ride. The initial Irish/American cultural shock and fish-out-of-water gags are reminiscent of Galocha’s previous directorial work with Mummies, but with a thankful refocus on letting the visuals and performances do the telling (as opposed to getting jumpscared by Nickelback in Mummies’ case). And with the inclusion not just of other orphans, but also a nation of Native Americans (albeit a fictional one in the ‘Trian’), its initial empathy for the disabled expands into one for all manner of Others, pitting them against a gang of prospecting outlaws who seek to exploit any and all for gold. Much like the film’s refinement of Cuerdas’ depiction of disability, it also fine-tunes the anti-colonialism of Mummies to help bulk up the dramatic stakes.
With a brief run time, its An American Tail-esque conceit of facing danger to reunite with family doesn’t feel stretched out nor underutilised, and the visuals help massively in that regard. Guadalajara-based studio CORE Animation make great use of lighting effects to bring out the beauty of the ‘untamed’ American wilderness, and are smart with sound, as the film’s most emotional moments are typically the ones that utilise as little sound as possible, like a stomach-churning sequence where Nick (briefly) meets a couple looking to adopt. Not that they can’t pull out the stops for an action scene, though, as the mine rollercoaster chase is quite fun too.
Buffalo Kids is a fun and heart-warming romp that finds both its directors expanding on their respective repertoires. With Pedro Solís, there’s less emphasis on tragedy in his depiction of disability, which allows his more pointed statements about societal treatment. And with Juan Jesús García Galocha, his active disdain for those who take advantage of others isn’t as held back by appeals to modern family film cliches (nor an Angry Birds Movie-esque approach to soundtrack), and further bolsters the film’s gorgeous appeals to unity and community. Sure, its animation isn’t likely to wow, and the plot point to do with berries is peak kids’ film material in not-so-great ways, but for the goals it aims for and the entertainment it provides, there’s plenty of joy on this train to make it worth getting on-board.
