Hallo Panda
By Daniel Buckley at 5 August, 2010, 12:01 am
As anyone who’s been watching BBC3′s Mongrels can attest, foul mouthed animals are a mine of comedic potential.
Another offering from Chris and Ben Blaine for C film, Hallo Panda is a comedy of unrequited love and panda husbandry.
The film follows inept zoologist Mark (Stephen Beckingham), as he struggles with the two main problems in his life.
First, he is hopeless besotted with moth expert Sarah (Cariad Lloyd) – and secondly, he is totally failing to convince a panda (Benedict Wong) to mate in order to save its own species.
As with most Blaine Brother films, Hallo Panda is without much in the way of serious problems – It’s a good, solid, occasionally outrageous comedy that revels in its own ridiculousness.
It requires the viewer to accept that this isn’t meant to be our world, but a strange doppelganger of it where scientists always wear their lab coats to the pub and where a panda can talk – and at the end of the day you don’t need any explanation for it.
Though providing plenty of laughs, the lion’s share of them goes to Benedict Wong as Panda. Where most of the other characters are perfunctory, Panda is an absolutely wonderful antagonist, who refuses to mate to save his species because he’s not in the mood.
Sadly, he is also Mark’s only friend and some of the sweetest scenes in the film come when Panda offers Mark advice on his love life. These scenes are played almost straight, and it’s easy to forget you’re watching a panda and a zoologist rather than two mates down the pub.
Hallo Panda requires something of a suspension of disbelief but it’s well worth trying to catch if you’re passing C Soco this August.
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Hallo Panda will be shown weekly from the 3rd to the 30th of August at C soco urban garden. The screenings are free to the public.
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C FILM REVIEWS – Film at the Edinburgh Fringe, Hand Island, Thank You Skinhead Girl, Hip Hip Hooray, Knock Knock and The End of the Pier Show
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