by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Lily LaTorre, Jai Courtney, Matt Day, Deborah Mailman, Jack Thompson, Jack LaTorre, Genevieve Lemon
Intro:
… locally-farmed joy for the whole family.
Right from the first scene, this adaptation of Craig Silvey’s bestselling children’s novel of the same name hits that sweet spot you can only really get from Aussie media made for kids. The panto performances from the butcher, baker, and dog-catcher as they run after the titular pup, the big bad property baron who wants to obtain the home of our main characters by any means necessary a la Mr. Gribble from Round The Twist (which shares production credits with this through the Australian Children’s Television Foundation), the aggressive punning in the names for just about everything, costume choices that tap into the same dated kitsch as any number found in Kath & Kim; this is national camp done right.
The direction from John Sheedy strikes the desired balance between the aforementioned silliness (along with children building a mad science weather machine), and the quietly tragic reasoning behind a lot of those same actions. Much like with his last film, the cheerfully chaotic H is for Happiness, it marries an off-kilter tone with proper emotional depth. Same goes for the action scenes involving Dog Agility competitions, which echo films like Paper Planes in doing justice to an outlier sport, and the larger structure of the story also plays along with those tropes… save for a few key divergences that end up making bigger impacts as a result.
The story is of a similar breed to Silvey’s breakout hit Jasper Jones. Like JJ, this is also about the environment that creates precociousness in kids and the effect that secrets can have both on individuals and whole communities. Albeit with a much lighter tone, with the precociousness (embodied by Lilly LaTorre’s terrific performance as habitual tinkerer Annie) treated as less of an absolute necessity, and the secrets having more to do with hidden desires and ambitions than past sins. Amongst the heightened energy of her surroundings, there’s something rather tragic about Annie being the hero of the story, acknowledging it in a way that not many stories about kids being the adults in the room end up touching.
Yeah, yeah, we hear ya: “What about the bloody doggos?!” Well, rescue dog Squid as Runt makes for an ideal pairing with LaTorre, but beyond the initial d’aww! factor, the character of Runt on his own is something worth cherishing. His mannerisms both at home and while competing are curiously relatable (the whole subplot involving blinders is neurodivergent), and the way he’s introduced and described, he’s basically the mongrel that represents our nation of mongrels; a symbol for how it doesn’t matter where you were or who you’ve been, because you’re here now with the rest of us are just trying to live our truths. He is mateship made manifest.
Runt is locally-farmed joy for the whole family. It fits alongside Red Dog as a canine caper that instils some pride in how it represents Australia as a social and artistic culture (thankfully without the mineral aftertaste this time around), anchored by its commendable production values, fun but thoughtful approach to the usual sports/kid-and-their-pet film tropes, and quality performances across the board (Jai Courtney needs to keep this in his back pocket next time he’s Stateside, because this is easily his best work to date).
