Anitta, Charlie Adler, Cinzia Angelini, David Feiss, Dennis Leonard, Flavor Flav, Hannah Gadsby, Hitpig, Jason Sudeikis, Lilly Singh, Lorraine Ashbourne, movies, Rainn Wilson, reviews, RuPaul, Shelby Young
November 3, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Cinzia Angelini and David Feiss
Culture Representation: The animated film “Hitpig!” features a cast of characters portraying humans and talking animals.
Culture Clash: A pig, who works as a bounty hunter of animals, is hired to track down and capture an elephant that has run away from doing an exploitative performance show in Las Vegas, and the pig becomes conflicted about completing the job when he finds the elephant and becomes friendly with the elephant.
Culture Audience: “Hitpig!” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s voice cast and derivative animated films.
“Hitpig!” (about a bounty hunter pig) is a messy and unimaginative animated film with absolutely no surprises and no clever comedy. This flaccid flop has too many shallow or annoying characters. The animation is mediocre-to-bad, with manic editing that still manages to be dull. Anyone who appreciates good animation will have a hard time staying interested in the sloppy and derivative “Hitpig!”
Directed by Cinzia Angelini and David Feiss, “Hitpig!” has a screenplay written by Berkeley Breathed, Dave Rosenbaum and Tyler Werrin. The movie is based partially on Breathed’s 2008 children’s book “Pete and Pickles,” about the unlikely friendship between a pig named Pete and a runaway circus elephant named Pickles. In “Hitpig!,” the male pig is named Hitpig (voiced by Jason Sudeikis), which is supposed to be a shortened version of Hit Pygmy Elephant, even though this animal is pig, not an elephant.
Does this make sense to you? Of course not. It’s an example of many unnecessarily moronic things about this movie. Hitpig is not a pig version of a hitman. Instead, Hitpig is a bounty hunter who captures wild animals that have usually escaped from people who want to imprison these animals.
It’s explained in the beginning of the movie that Hitpig worked with a human mentor named Big Bertha (played by Lorraine Ashbourne), and most of the animals they collected/captured were reptiles. Big Bertha had a passion for cooking and taught Hitpig how to make omelettes and other meals. Hitpig’s cooking skills are the flimsy basis of a poorly written subplot about his secret desire to quit being a bounty hunter to become a chef. Flavor Flav (best known as a former member of the rap group Public Enemy) has a voice cameo as an emcee for a chef talent contest.
Early on in “Hitpig!,” Big Bertha dies when she gets an assignment to capture a lizard, but the lizard turned out to be a crocodile that immediately ate Big Bertha. Years later, Hitpig is on his own as a bounty hunter. He uses a high-tech vehicle called a CatchVan (voiced by Shelby Young) that has its own computer voice. At the Perfectly Fine Nuclear Power Plant, a polecat named Polecat (voiced by RuPaul) escapes and has an unusual quirk: Because of living in a nuclear power plant, this polecat has a body that glows, and Polecat’s farts have nuclear power that can be used as weapons.
When Hitpig encounters Polecat and finds out about Polecat’s farts literally having nuclear-levels of toxicty, Hitpig says to Polecat: “Some guys cut the cheese. You destroy the cheese.” (Yes, it’s that kind of movie.)
Hitpig gets an assignment to find and capture a former circus elephant from India named Pickles (voiced by Lilly Singh), who is now owned by a greedy and corrupt show promoter named Leapin’ Lord of the Leotard (voiced by Rainn Wilson), who plans to use Pickles for an ongoing animal show residency in Las Vegas. Leapin’ Lord offers to pay a $1 million bounty to Hitpig if Hitpig can return Pickles to Leapin’ Lord in time for the debut performance of this Las Vegas show, which will take place in just a few days. It’s an offer that Hitpig can’t refuse.
Along the way, Hitpig meets a motley crew of characters, including an animal rights activist named Letícia dos Anjos (played by Anitta), who is also looking for Pickles, because Letícia wants to take Pickles back to India and set Pickles free in Pickles’ native country. Talking animals who get involved in these shenanigans include Polecat; a sassy koala named Lola (voiced by Hannah Gadsby); a lobster named Lobster (voiced by Charlie Adler); and a celebrity chicken named Super Rooster (also voiced by Adler). Leapin’ Lord also has a sidekick crocodile named Fluffy (voiced by Dennis Leonard), who doesn’t talk but makes other noises.
The race against time to find Pickles leads to a trip to outer space and more “madcap” hijinks that aren’t very funny or adventurous. It’s a jumbled and utterly predictable movie with unimpressive voice performances. Anitta in particular has a very flat delivery of her dialogue lines—an indication that she needs more acting lessons.
“Hitpig!” is not an agressively horrible movie, but it’s got an incredibly lazy story with no real effort into making these characters anything other than trite and generic. The onslaught of idiotic jokes don’t help. The movie’s weak comedy, just like the rest of “Hitpig!,” is easily forgotten because there’s nothing special about this utterly trite and muddled film.
Viva Pictures released “Hitpig!” in U.S. cinemas on November 1, 2024.