RUNT
★½

Rated PG, 92 minutes
Review by Jake Wilson

When all else fails in Australian cinema, send in the dogs. In the tradition of Red Dog and Oddball comes John Sheedy’s Runt, a live-action adaptation of a children’s novel by Craig Silvey, about a humble mongrel who shares his homeland’s plucky spirit.

Runt (played by Squid) may belong to no special breed, but he has a special knack for jumping through hoops, running through tunnels and so on. After he triumphs in an agility competition at the local fair, his nine-year-old owner Annie Shearer (Lily LaTorre) puts her faith in him as a champion who can help save her family’s farm and rescue her town of Upson Downs from the clutches of greedy landowner Earl Robert-Baron (Jack Thompson).

As this account suggests, Runt the movie is conceived in the spirit of pantomime. Nearly all the adult cast is encouraged to mug relentlessly, whether heroes or villains (the unsinkable Deborah Mailman is allowed a little more restraint as Annie’s reclusive mentor).

Runt himself is more plot device than character and there is little excitement to the choppily edited scenes of him going through his paces for the big tournament in London. Dramatically speaking, only two things can occur: he fails or succeeds by doing what’s expected of him.

There’s never any doubt Runt is a world-class talent: the problem is getting the world to notice, especially given his tendency to freeze in front of outsiders. Is this a metaphor for the Australian film industry? Perhaps, although it’s unclear how far the filmmakers have thought it through.

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What is clear is that they’ve put some effort into combining traditional and progressive values (Silvey’s novel is like Roald Dahl with anything potentially offensive taken out, which is to say not much like Roald Dahl at all). Jai Courtney personifies this balancing act as Annie’s dad, a gruff yet sensitive bloke who supports his daughter at every turn; as her mum, Celeste Barber has less to do, beyond a running gag about her terrible cooking.

Criticising Runt may seem a bit like, well, kicking a dog. To show I’m not completely heartless, I can report I was touched and amused by Ant Timpson’s recent Bookworm, a comparably homely family entertainment about a father and daughter lost in the New Zealand wilderness, still in Australian cinemas as I write.

There are scenes in Runt I enjoyed, especially those involving Annie’s brother Max (Jack LaTorre), a daredevil who lives in hope of going viral with filmed stunts such as setting his bike wheels on fire or leaping from a height with a homemade parachute. To be clear, I don’t encourage kids to try these tricks at home. But any hint of recklessness is welcome in a film as routine as Runt.

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