There have a few times over my years of attending film festivals that I’ve seen a short film so amazing I wish it had been feature-length. More often than not, I’ve seen films that would have worked as shorts, but fall apart as features. Unfortunately, Van Von Hunter falls into the latter category.
Based on a Manga series, the film is a mockumentary that envisions titular character crossing the threshold between his imaginary land of Dikay into our reality; specifically, Hollywood. He meets up with a student filmmaker who, intrigued by Von Hunter’s dedication to hunting evil “stuff”, encourages him to audition for a moving being made of the Manga based on him. What follows is a fish-out-of-water story, where Von Hunter learns of the evils of Hollywood, the trauma of love, and the precarious nature of stardom.
I don’t agree with a lot of film critics who also pounce on aesthetic and visual quality; as long as I can see and hear everything, I think a film should be able to stand on its story and am more than happy to watch films of a more amateur quality. And certainly there were some great moments in the film, such as the use of the Manga image on screen, a combination of animation and live action as the story showed panels from the book moving the viewer through the story as a nod to the original source material. But Van Von Hunter’s story is not sustainable. It is based on very inside jokes for the most part, and the laughs that do come are so few and far between as to make the interim almost interminable.
