Movie Review: For a family movie, ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’ is refreshing and quirky

New Zealand will forever be linked, cinematically, to the massive Peter Jackson epics “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit,” but the small island country is also gaining a reputation as an incubator for a distinctive comic sensibility.

The musical duo “Flight of the Conchords” has been cracking up audiences worldwide for a decade now, and film director Taika Waititi, with the help of Jemaine Clement, a Flight of the Conchords member, made the funniest movie of last year, the vampire mockumentary “What We Do in the Shadows.”

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Waititi is back with another Kiwi comedy, “Hunt for the Wilderpeople.” Only this time it’s more of a children’s movie. It still has a sharp sense of humor but it’s much gentler and more heartfelt.

The unlikely hero of “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” is a 13-year-old troublemaker, or at least that’s how his child welfare supervisor describes him when she introduces him to his umpteenth foster parents.

Ricky Baker is an overweight, city kid who’s been kicked out of so many foster homes that he’s down to his last option — a crusty old married couple who live off the land in a rundown farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, or more precisely, on the edge of the unforgiving New Zealand bush. Ricky takes one look at the backward condition of the place — no television, no cellphone service, no internet — and decides he’d rather spend his teenage years “in juvie.”

Ricky likes to think of himself as “a menace to society,” but you can tell he’s got a soft heart, and he’s eventually won over when his new guardians give him a dog, which he promptly names “Tupac.” He’s also mightily impressed when he watches his new “Mom” hunt down a wild boar with nothing but a knife. Learning how to skin animals and shoot a rifle gives a Ricky a new lease on life, a fantasy life that suddenly seems to him like a combination of “Scarface” and “The Lord of the Rings.”

About a half hour into the film a dramatic turn of events sends Ricky and his new “Dad” (Sam Neill) scurrying into the woods to hide from authorities. The bulk of the film consists of the two of them making the best of a life on the run deep in bush country. It manages to be poignant and funny in equal measure.

Fans of “What We Do in the Shadows” may be disappointed that “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” isn’t more caustic. But for a family movie, it’s refreshing that it retains as much of that quirky Kiwi sense of humor as it does.