HITPIG - Mark Reviews Movies

Hitpig, Viva Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 31, 2024

Hitpig is so busy with action and jokes that those elements define the entirety of the movie's personality. There might have been a fun story and some likeable characters here, but their potential is overshadowed by the near-constant need to keep both the plot and those characters moving. We can feel the strain of the effort.

The idea, at least, is amusing. It's loosely—apparently—based on a children's book by Berkeley Breathed, although the author's story and screenwriting credits suggest he's fine with whatever changes have been made. The story takes place in a world where humans and talking animals co-exist, but some of those animals, apparently, are still kept as pets, confined to zoos, exploited by various enterprises, and eaten. One would think animal sentience might change at least some of these human practices, but then again, there is the whole span of human history to make one think otherwise.

Anyway, our hero is Hitpig (voice of Jason Sudeikis), who is, as the name implies, a pig who works a contracted job targeting others. As the name doesn't imply, though, Hitpig is not an assassin but a bounty hunter, who searches for animals who have escaped or been rescued from captivity in order to return them. Learning that the protagonist in Breathed's book Pete & Pickles is just an ordinary pig who goes on imaginary adventures with an elephant is somewhat enlightening about the filmmakers' view of its anticipated audience, as well as how the movies generally seem to bypass simple and innocent stories for convoluted and frantic ones.

The storytelling frenzy begins right away, as Hitpig is called in to stop a polecat (voiced by RuPaul) who has fled from a nuclear power plant in the Arctic Circle. The poor thing is utilized as a living radiation test, but after it sabotages the plant by stealing the radioactive core, the creature gains the power of explosive flatulence. The screenplay by Breathed, Dave Rosenbaum, and Tyler Werrin is at least upfront with its chaotic intentions and its low-bar sense of humor.

We briefly learn about Hitpig's past—trained to do this work by a human bounty hunter (voiced by Lorraine Ashbourne) who died in the line of duty when she learned too late that "Little" was an ironic name for an escaped reptile. He has known nothing other than the job, except for his secret passion of cooking during his downtime, and Hitpig lives a lonely existence out of a flying, jet-powered van that can get him anywhere in the world—or, because the story is so determined to move as fast and far as possible, beyond—in a flash.

His archnemesis is an animal rights' activist named Leticia (voice of Anitta), who does keep Hitpig in constant work around the globe. Her latest escapade is freeing an elephant named Pickles (voice of Lilly Singh), who was abducted as a baby and now finds herself the centerpiece of a sort-of circus act. The ringleader is the incompetent Leapin' Lord of the Leotard (voice of Rainn Wilson), who comes from a long line of daring performers but can barely live up to his stage name. Leticia tries to return Pickles to India, but after the Leapin' Lord hires Hitpig, our porcine hero intercepts the elephant in London.

From there, well, the movie keeps doing what it has done from the start—coming up with assorted action sequences and filling the gaps of that action with a lot of puns, pop-culture references, and scatological gags. Some of these sequences are visually engaging, such as Pickles and Hitpig leaping or being flung across a string of hot air balloons, or clever, such as the pig trying to keep the elephant's head above water in a flooding house, or theoretically funny, such as Hitpig finding himself a TV cooking competition and needing Pickles to disguise her trunk as one of his hands. If the description of any of those scenes comes across as confusing or contrived, think of seeing each of them and more in quick succession over the course of the movie.

It's a lot—too much, really. That's especially the case when the humor within and between the action feels forced, trying to appeal to both kids and adults in obvious ways, and the story is just an excuse to tie together these disparate setpieces. There are some times when co-directors David Feiss and Cinzia Angelini slow down things to get at a worthy message about the abuse and exploitation of animals, as well as the growing bond between the pig and the elephant. By the time a superhero rooster (voiced by Charlie Adler) arrives to help save a kidnapped audience from a space-bound circus show, however, the movie has pummeled any sense of sincerity into submission.

There's nothing wrong with silliness, of course. Indeed, something like Hitpig more or less demands it. There is, though, a fine line between trying to be silly and simply being so, and this movie aggressively crosses it in the wrong direction from the top and repeatedly.

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