Hitpig! Review — Cheap Animated Comedy is Exactly What You’d Expect

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At your local theater, you might’ve seen a gaudy-looking poster for a generic, cheap-looking animated film calledHitpig!If you were wondering if it was somehow good, I’m here to tell you that it’s exactly what you’d expect: a dumb, annoying, and predictable animated comedy without much going for it.

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Hitpig!Review

Hitpig!follows a down-on-his-luck bounty-hunting pig, played byJason Sudeikis, tasked to return an elephant (Lilly Singh) for a million-dollar payday. Hilarity ensues. Along the way, the two mismatched allies meet a wide variety of adversaries that threaten their mission and make it all the more ridiculous.

With a screenplay from three separate writers and two directors, it’s unsurprising that this story is all types of messy. We’re introduced to the titular Hitpig years after his caretaker was brutally murdered by a crocodile. It’s a weird way to start, and it only gets more ridiculous as the film goes on. In a weird way, though, it ends up being a little charming in its insanity. Even if it doesn’t make much sense, it’s at least entertaining enough to be watchable.

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To see how mediocreHitpig!is, look no further than its production history. In 2014, Dreamworks purchased Berkeley Breathed’s children’s bookPete & Picklesbefore going into production hell for six years. In 2020, Aniventure took over, and after a few replacements for its directors, the film was hastily animated with a big cast and distributed by Viva Pictures. Never heard of them? That makes sense. They seem to be in the game of releasing cheap animated films nationwide without any noticeable marketing effort. It’s a little ridiculous.

It’s certainly a step above the average junky animated film that gets dumped by a no-name studio, though. Sudeikis is fun as the energetic leading pig, andRainn Wilsondelivers a fun performance as a ridiculous circus leader. Lilly Singh is sort of funny as Pickles, the elephant, but not incredibly interesting. The rest of the cast is full of big names like RuPaul, Hannah Gadsby, Flavor Flav, and Andy Serkis, who are all a little fun but not too special.

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With a stated runtime of 86 minutes and the credits rolling at minute 73, it’s ridiculous how short this is. It’s pretty clear this is a film driven not by passion but by money. Each beat of the film seems mechanically engineered to be as efficient as possible. A few jokes are told, some music plays, and the scene transitions over to the next one.

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Unsurprisingly, the animation is lame. It’s not quite laughably bad, but it’s just embarrassing. The character design is pretty interesting, but it all looks pretty cheap. The backgrounds are empty-looking, and the whole film looks like it’s a rough pass of animation that needs another cycle to finish. Though, like everything else in the film, it’s clear that the studio was just trying to push this thing out as quickly as possible.

IsHitpig!worth watching?

The final act is a mix of the best and worst parts of the film. When the villain decides to bring a crowd of people into space and abandon them, all in the effort of giving them the “coolest show of their lives,” it actually works quite a bit. It’s silly, colorful, and surprisingly creative. Then, it turns back into exactly the type of generic stupidity that you’d think.

If you’re looking for a dumb family film, this might be serviceable enough entertainment. It’s the type of high-energy content that little kids could enjoy, but they deserve something more than total nonsense. With an A-list cast and not much else going for it,Hitpig!feels destined to fall into the abyss of mediocre animated films.

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Hitpig!opens in theaters on November 1.