Me and this fat kid / We ran we ate and read books / And it was the best

The title Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Watiti expansive sense of human beings allows his characters to endure loss and hardship without forcing them to be wholly limited by their suffering, as Mr. Waititi knows that we love to cry at sad and bad times, but he also knows that people in pain need to get on with their lives. They’re romantic and pragmatic, eccentric and utterly ordinary. They’re also reasonably flawed, as is this movie, but Mr. Waititi transcends the essence on ordinary people yet down to earth feelings.

The story started with odd-couple adventure is the well-acted story of a down-and-out Maori kid and his grouchy foster parent. Quirky and offbeat it is a little movie that showcased moments of surprising emotions and magic , Hunt for the Wilderpeople has bring very familiar yet strange especially regarding orphan or foster children, but it manages to stay between Ricky and his foster parents chemistry, well played with human nature and movies. The film is funny, heartwarming and doesn’t leave the viewer feeling cynical or hopeless.

But his foster aunt Bella breaks down his defences with down-to-earth love and affectionate mockery. Bella honest and pure affection making sure Ricky has a "hottie" (hot water bottle) on his pillow every night to keep him warm and cuddly. But she's also fierce enough to slit a wild pig's throat and then casually say to Ricky "well, that's dinner." Her foil is the hilariously hard-nosed child protective services' case worker Paula, who will stop at nothing to "rescue" a boy she considers a "bad egg." But this isn't ultimately their story. It's the story of city-kid Ricky, who learns to appreciate and even love the bush as much as his "uncle" Hec, a man who may not know how to read words but knows how to survive -- something they both become adept at doing together. Gradually they realized the two rejected loners will only be accepted by such gold-hearted Bella.

But after the sudden death of Bella has leave us all in stunt where audience are expecting the chemistry and love between Ricky and Bella, as well Ricky transformation to accept a family and a home but the death has leave all of us to experience the same grief as Ricky does. However, when a tragedy threatens to steal back the life that Ricky has come to love, 13 years old Ricky has changed him a little or less for him to decide taking an adventure into the bushes to send Bella to the top of the mountain. And of course he do not want to go back to children welfare service knowing that Uncle Hec do not want him to stay with him. Deep in the forest, Ricky plans a life living off the land with his dog Tupac. He was found by Hec, who gets injured because of Ricky, delaying their return to civilization long enough that the authorities come looking. Ricky writes haiku. Hec hunts. And the two become famous, all over national news and tracked by the incompetent Paula. “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” becomes a road movie with no road, a film about two people who may seem entirely different but have both been discarded by society.But the real heart of the story rests in the between Ricky and Hec. Forced into a relationship neither really wants, they eventually grow to a place of true friendship and respect. Alone together they must grow beyond their own way of thinking and see things from the other side. Eventually they do, with Hec's proclamation that we didn't choose the skuxx life, the skuxx life chose us sealing the deal.

 The comedy in “Wilderpeople” showcased in a very quiet yet funny ways, which strengthens the story’s realism. Ricky is a funny kid. He’s amusing to look at, for one thing, like the bad-boy haikus he creates as part of his therapeutic training. As a child of social services, he throws words like “processing” around, though this abandoned children has not much chances to expressed his emotions and haikus might be the only way he know could help him. 

Despite the claims of Paula (the social worker tasked with ‘hunting’ Ricky down) that ‘no child should be left behind’, her treatment of Ricky does not stem from care and/or a sense of responsibility as much as it shows an exercise of state power and containment. Indeed, paula actually take all these 'problematic' children as problematic and might be a threat to country so she did her best to contained and controlled Ricky. She uses 'No Child Left Behind' as she seen as a threat focusing Ricky as problem that needs to be solved. As she said Ricky and Hec as not people so much as problems to be solved. She is the one that sets Ricky as failures by listing all his problems instead of qualities even when she first met with Bella (his new foster mother). 

‘He’s not just a child, he’s a spanner in the works’ – a reflection of the existing colonial mentality in New Zealand, where Māori children are treated as older and less innocent than their Pākehā counterparts. 

Waititi’s film never judges its characters. Ricky isn’t a “bad egg” or a “dumb kid.” The film finds joy in scenes like the one in which he creates a fake Walkman and dances to the music in his head. It’s essential to the film’s success that Ricky’s not just the bumbling idiot he could have been in another filmmaker’s hands. We feel honest affection for Ricky. Waititi and Hec find depth within the characters, as small moments become the foundation for the film’s emotion. They don’t play the coming-of-age arc, they play the reality of each scene. It may sound obvious, but so many films like “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” try to play the emotion instead of grounding it in character.

He breaks “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” up into chapters, making it feel almost like a memory or the story that an adult Ricky is telling his kids later in life. It almost approaches fairy tale mythology, especially the surprisingly action-packed finale, one in which we honestly care about the fate of our two protagonists.

So much of “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” looks easy. It’s not until one considers the number of places it could have gone awry that one truly appreciates it. There are so many minor beats that produce laughs and major moments that create surprising emotion. There’s a great scene halfway through in which Hec and Ricky are high enough in the mountains that they can almost touch the sky and Hec calls it “majestical.” It’s not a real word, as Ricky corrected him but at last even Ricky prefer the wrong one. And indeed, it's a downright majestical movie.