French inspired Hot Fuzz is a little mental, but a comical outing from Sarah Arnold in her directorial debut writes Carter Smith
Too Many Beasts is a kooky French police mystery directed by Sarah Arnold about a police officer who, after being transferred to the small village, has to investigate the growing conflicts between the farmers and the hunters. It’s a self-assured directorial debut from Arnold who borrows a lot from Hot Fuzz but gives it her own amusing spin.
Like Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), our police officer Fulda (Alexis Manenti) is reeling from a break-up. Though he is hardly dealing with it well. He spends his nights meeting the end of the bottle to the sweet tune of his ex-girlfriend’svoicemail. He is hardly heroic like Simon Pegg in Edgar Wright’s magnum opus but he does have a passion for stopping injustices.
The one he faces here in the countryside, however, nearly sends him over the edge of his own sanity. No worries, the department has been sent a mandatory psychiatrist, Stéphane (An hysterical Ella Rumpf), to stop them from going mad.
So what’s the mystery? Well, the town is overrun with boars. Yep, big boars. It had become an issue a year prior withunhappy farmer Brun (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h), who shoots the hunters’ club president after having one too many of his buttons pushed. I liken him to the bloodthirsty farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean from Fantastic Mr Fox. I’m sure they’dhave a great time sharing a cider and relating to their farming grievances.
It’s a weird old mystery. A mystery which isn’t taken seriously by the rest of the department due to the bizarre nature of it all, leading Fulda to enlist Stéphane to help him out.
It’s fun to speculate what’s going on, though I could have had a million guesses and not predict what transpires in the last half an hour.
Already funny throughout, the film takes a turn to true madcap shenanigans which I couldn’t stop laughing at. The physical comedy on display is Jim Carey levels of excellent and one you can’t look away from.
It is quite deranged as it goes – a nice change of pace to what the festival has produced so far.
Films like these are the beauty of a film festival. Sure, it’s fun to see celebs on red carpets, industry professionals talk about their work and see the Oscar contenders, but if I can’t enjoy a film about boars and hunters and police officers here, then when can I?
Too Many Beasts? In my eyes, not enough. I would have loved to see more.
- Too Many Beasts is yet to have a release date
