Director/ Writer: Paul King

DVD/ Blu-ray release date: March 29 2010

Certificate: 15

Starring: Edward Hogg, Simon Farnaby, Veronica Echegui, Richard Ayoade

 Director, Paul King, of The mighty Boosh takes you on an intelligent and characteristically surreal adventure in his first feature film, Bunny and the Bull.

Opening with exquisite narration depicting the monotony of the protagonist, Stephen Turnball’s (Edward Hogg) life, Bunny and the Bull explores a traumatised character existing in a carefully controlled OCD’s surroundings where everything is filed into neatly labelled boxes of useless objects like “drinking straws 1995-1996”.

Stephen lives in Kings Cross but could live anywhere. He has not left his house for a year: “Every day he showers for 28 minutes, stacks his urine, notes the PH level and files his floss. Everyday he watches eight episodes of Ray Mears Extreme Survivalon video tape, eats a freeze packed vegetarian lasagne and does a 20 page bumper cross word book.”

The film opens with the day “there is a break in his carefully orchestrated plan.” Mice have gnawed through his freezer cables causing all of his carefully stacked lasagnes to defrost and allowing the mice to consume them.

Hungry, Stephen contemplates leaving the house but merely touching the door catch to the outside world leads to flash backs of Stephen frantically running through a field. As a compromise, he rings Captain Crab’s automated home delivery take-away service. The arrival of Captain Crab’s only vegetarian option and the take-away box he eats from, reminds Stephen of his travels with his dare-devil outlandish friend, Bunny (Simon Farnaby), and leads to a flash back of Stephen being stood-up when waiting for the love of his life, Melanie, who he has loved for three years but never told.

Determined to force the memories aside, Stephen fails, returning to graphic novel scenery inside the bookies where he gives Bunny the money to place a 50:1 bet on the 340 at Ripon. Using Bunny’s Hindenburg Theory, they win £2,500 to fund the trip abroad Bunny suggests will help them to meet women who might be more interested in them.

The story is told as everyday objects and mementoes of the trip force Stephen to remember painful events. A snow globe reminds Stephen of his initial heartbreak and figments of his imagination force him to revisit the fateful road trip through his memories.

Stephen planned his trip using his “15,000 pages of fun” that sees the mismatched duo visiting such life-changing sites as the museum of X-rays, The German Museum of Cutlery and the National Shoe Museum in Poland, where Richard Ayoade, Moss of The IT Crowd, makes an entertaining cameo appearance.

Fed up of Stephen’s regimented plans, wild-card, Bunny, picks a place to eat by randomly putting his finger on a map and destiny takes them to another branch of Captain Crab’s where they meet a fiery disgruntled, Eloisa (Veronica Echegui), dressed in a crab suit. Stephen is drawn to her but she quits her Captain Crab job, planning to return to Spain for a Fiesta. Keen for Stephen to get to know Eloisa, an ever-spontaneous Bunny wins them a car by eating a tray of crabs in five minutes, allowing them to pick up Eloisa and escort her to Spain.

 Bunny advises Stephen not to talk about the demise of the Semi-Colon to woe Eloisa but initially Stephen’s vegetarian fanaticism and awkward shyness fail to impress her.  He is a man taking a year break from sex who has condoms attached to his belt in a contraption akin to an old style bus ticket dispenser.

Visually stunning, Bunny and the Bullacts as a reflective road movie using inventive dreamscapes to tell the story of Stephen and Bunny’s European adventure as they catch a train made up of polaroid carriages; drive across a Captain Crab chain map and drive through a cardboard cut-out countryside with Mrs Brown, the bear, strapped to the roof of their Captain Crab delivery car. The fairground that Stephen gets closer to Eloisa in is made up of the workings of clocks and the field Bunny finally gets to dance with a bull in is a patchwork quilt, and the bull comprised of scrap metal.

Well-observed imaginative scenes, quirky characters and a thoroughly well written script make Bunny and the Bull a delight from start to finish. From the superstitious and blunt, Eloisa with her catchphrase “Are you fucking my face?” regularly demanded of her unlikely travel companions to the comical scene where a sinister homeless man serves the friends dog’s milk from a dog confusingly named “Cow” and the realistically awkward bitter-sweet sex scene where Stephen is finally able to shed his inability to be anything more than a friend to the female sex, Bunny and the Bull is an excellent debut from Paul King.

Extras: Audio commentary with Paul King, Mary Burke, Edward Hogg and Simon Farnaby; Behind the Scenes Featurette; Paul King’s Guide to The Film; Empire Featurette; Bloopers; Interview with Paul King; Interview with Simon Farnaby and Edward Hogg; Get the Picture; Deleted Scenes; Museum Stills Gallery and Up, Up And Away: Short Film Competition Winner.