Boy

New Zealand

2010

87 Min

Color

1.85:1

English

Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
1
2
3
4
5

PROD Ainsley Gardiner, Cliff Curtis, Emanual Michael

CAST Taika Waititi, James Rolleston, Te Aho Eketone-Whitu

ED Chris Plummer, Yana Gorskaya

MUSIC The Phoenix Foundation

Sundance (World Cinema Dramatic Competition), Melbourne (Next Gen), AFI FEST (World Cinema): Audience Award, Stockholm (Open Zone), !F Istanbul (Spotlight), Athens (Panorama)

Synopsis

It’s 1984, and Michael Jackson is king—even in Waihau Bay, New Zealand. Here we meet Boy, an 11-year-old who lives on a farm with his gran, a goat, and his younger brother, Rocky (who thinks he has magic powers). Shortly after Gran leaves for a week, Boy’s father, Alamein, appears out of the blue. Having imagined a heroic version of his father during his absence, Boy comes face to face with the real version—an incompetent hoodlum who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years before. This is where the goat enters.

Inspired by his Oscar-nominated short, Two Cars, One Night, Taika Waititi offers a charming, funny, and earnest coming-of-age story where everybody has some coming of age to do—particularly Alamein (affably played by Waititi himself). Never short on humor, Waititi’s story is ultimately about three boys (one grown) reconciling fantasy with reality. —Sundance Film Festival

Director

Taika Waititi

Taika Waititi (born August 16, 1975), also known as Taika Cohen, is a New Zealand-born film director, writer, painter, comedian and actor named as one of Variety’s “ten new directors to watch” in 2007. His 2010 film Boy has done very well in New Zealand, eclipsing several records, and he was nominated for an Academy Award for his 2003 short film Two Cars, One Night. —Wikipedia

Wall

Displaying 4 of 15 wall posts.

see all

cognoscens

15May13

The day the Criterion Collection adds this excellent slice-of-Aotearoa-life to their catalogue will be the day the Criterion Collection achieves self-actualization (or at the very least, some additional measure of legitimacy)

Ademption

19Mar13

Sunny. Precious. Indie without overdoing it. The Sweded Michael Jackson dream sequences are adorable.

Justin Oakey

7Nov12

Bizarre, funny, and outrageously touching story of childhood in rural New Zealand. Taika Waititi proves, again, that he is as talented on-screen as he is behind the camera, and the child actors are incredibly well cast. Overall, it's a beautiful little film.