REVIEW: “Hitpig!”

REVIEW: “Hitpig!”

October 30th, 2024

Martin Goodman

Berkeley Breathed is back in animation, and his many fans are the better for it. The mildly eccentric cartoonist behind the famous Bloom County comic strip was known to animation fans for his 1991 special A Wish For Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story. In 2000, Breathed made a nine-minute short for Nickelodeon, Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big. Now, the cartoonist has returned in a big way with Hitpig!

Like many of Breathed’s endeavors, the film began as a children’s book, Pete & Pickles. DreamWorks considered P&P as an animated project in 2014 but never developed it further. After an unsuccessful attempt to turn the book into an animated TV series, Breathed eventually found a producer in a British animation company, Aniventure. Cinesite took over production, using two Canadian facilities, and Hitpig! was on its way.

So, Hitpig! In some unspecified future, two animal bounty hunters return lost or escaped creatures for a fee. One of them is a world-weary pig named Hitpig, who teams up with his adoptive “mother,” Big Bertha. When a runaway Croc kills Bertha, Hitpig is left with only his advanced vehicle, the catchvan. After catching a radioactive polecat for scientists, Hitpig gets the offer of a lifetime – a million-dollar job!

The Leapin’ Lord of the Leotard is an obese, delusional circus performer with an animal act consisting of four poodles and a “dancing elephant” named Pickles. He is also a sadistic abuser, using his crocodile Fluffy to terrify his performers. Hitpig’s nemesis, activist Leticia dos Anjos, frees Pickles and intends to return her to India. The LLL offers Hitpig a million dollars to get Pickles back, and off we go.

Hitpig! turns into a busy and very off-kilter movie in which the action rarely slows, and even then, not for long. Co-director Director David Feiss (late of Cow and Chicken) thinks much like Breathed (who wrote the screenplay). The result is a sequence of bizarre scenes featuring an ever-expanding cast of weird animals, including the radioactive polecat, a savage koala named Lola, a Cajun lobster, and the TV superhero Super Rooster (who turns out to be a real superhero).

Through almost unbelievable turns, Leotard reclaims Pickles and throws the million dollars in Hitpig’s face. After Hitpig and Leticia join forces to save Pickles, all the animals pitch in, aided by the rocket-powered, sentient “catchvan.”

I won’t give away some of the more bizarre sequences save for Hitpig’s desperate appearance on King Chef for the Day, where he must prepare a gourmet omelet while Pickles works his injured hand like a sock puppet. The emcee is Flavor Flav (aka favorite son, Public Enemy Number One). You get the idea.
The grand finale features every character in the movie. Leotard has converted his Vegas venue into a giant rocketship that shoots his captive audience into space where he can perform without gravity. Disaster ensues, but can our band of heroes in their catchvan save the day?

Cinesite’s animation facilities are more than up to the task, and the CGI is generally excellent. The lighting effects rival anything found at DreamWorks, the studio that rejected the project and may regret it. Breathed designed the rather odd characters, and the visual design teams in Vancouver and Montreal do faithful renditions of the cartoonist’s unique style. Bloom County characters like Bill the Cat cameo, and it’s easy to imagine that Super Rooster is a nod to David Feiss, who recruited old friend Charlie Adler to voice the Rooster.

Not to be ignored is the rest of a beautiful voice cast led by Jason Sudeikis as the titular pig and Lilly Singh as Pickles. Comic actor Rainn Wilson is spot on as the villainous Leapin’ Lord of the Leotard. Anitta handles the voice of Letitcia expertly. RuPaul as the nuclear farting Polecat and Hannah Gadsby as Lola, the combative koala from down under, round out the main cast.

The film has few weaknesses, although the gags and a portion of the plot depend on jokes about flatulence, which has become a tired trope in the days since Shrek. There are some plot parallels between Hitpig! and the recent DreamWorks release, The Wild Robot, but Hitpig! is wilder than any robot and displays the imagination and originality missing from so many animated films of late. Perhaps Disney could sign Berkeley Breathed up to help them out of their lengthy slump.