(Reviews of Kneecap; Cadejo Blanco; Swan Song; and Noah's Ark)
KNEECAP.
Once banned by the British government, Irish (or Irish Gaelic) was finally recognised as an official language in the UK in 2022. There are around 80,000 speakers on the island for whom the language has a political, as well as a cultural significance. This is the tack taken by Kneecap, a fictionalised biopic of the eponymous Northern Irish rap trio, which has been directed by a Brit and will come as something of a shock to the system to those who fell in love with Irish through Colm Bairéad's An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl, 2021).
Born in the Gaeltacht Quarter of West Belfast, Liam (Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, aka Mo Chara) and Naoise (Naoise Ó Cairealláin, aka Móglaí Bap) have been pals since they put drugs in the thurible as altar boys. Naoise has been battling the odds since his christening at a secret mass stone in the woods was mistaken for an Irish Republican Army gathering by a helicopter crew from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (aka The Peelers). Making matters worse, however, is the fact that his father, Arló (Michael Fassbender), is in a state of limbo, as accounts vary as to whether or not he went over the side of a fishing boat.
As a consequence, the pair are forever being hauled in by Detective Ellis (Josie Walker) and it's during one late-night interrogation after a party drug bust that Liam meets JJ (JJ Ó Dochartaigh, aka DJ Próvai), a middle-aged teacher who has come along as an Irish translator because Liam claims not to understand English. Recognising that he is being harassed, he pretends to translate reasons why Ellis can't prove that he is refusing to co-operate and steals an incriminating notebook when the teenager creates a diversion.
Flicking through the notebook, JJ realises that Liam is a poet and he uses his DJ deck to mix a track that we see play out as a pop video with Naoirse and Liam rapping about being part of the Ceasefire Generation. While his mother, Dolores (Simone Kirby), has become a depressed recluse, Naoirse has secret meetings with Arló, who is furious with him for driving to a beach rendezvous in a stolen car. He disapproves of Naoirse's hedonist lifestyle and his joke about a Provo who becomes a yoga teacher being named Bobby Sandals. Admonishing his son for his casual attitude towards Irish, Arló orders him to stage a memorial service to mark the 10th anniversary of his death, as he is tired of always having to look over his shoulder for Peelers.
Meanwhile, Liam uses the psychological stress of the Troubles to get prescriptions from various sceptical doctors, one of whom is fascinated by the revelation that he has started an affair with a Protestant girl, Georgia (Jessica Reynolds), who turns him on in a way that Catholic women never do (`I'm gonna blow you like a Brighton hotel') and causes him to call out `Tiocfaidh ár lá' (`Our day will come') at orgasm. Wandering home in a green shellsuit, Liam provocatively walks down a narrow alley in which an Orange marching band has gathered and sprints away from the furious musicians brandishing the majorette's baton and badmouthing Glasgow Rangers.
He's rescued by the passing JJ, who returns the notebook and suggests that they form a hip hop band to keep the younger generation connected to the Irish language. However, JJ is also keen to prevent girlfriend Caitlin (Fionnuala Flaherty) from finding out about the band and the amount of drugs they do during recording sessions in his lock-up garage. But Georgia is impressed by the idea of Kneecap (named after the crippling punishment that had been common during the Troubles) and, even though they're first pub gig is a washout, the barmaid films it on her phone and word spreads. Their second gig is packed and JJ has to wear an Irish tricolour balaclava so he's not recognised.
This brings the unwanted attention of a group named Radical Republicans Against Drugs (R-RAD), who beat up Liam and Naoirse for dealing stuff delivered Royal Mail from orders placed in the Netherlands through the Dark Web. Ellis picks up that they have been targeted (R-RAD make a show of force at Arló's memorial) and she warns Dolores that Naoirse and Liam could be in big trouble if they push their luck. Pulling over JJ's car, she lets him know she knows he's in Kneecap and tips him off that the powers that be want them silenced - and that his career and marriage could be ruined if he persists in using Irish lyrics as a weapon.
Arló is also angry about R-RAD targeting his son because of his dealing and he comes to the house to tell Dolores that he will close him down. But she refuses to be intimidated and accuses him of being a coward for putting her in a jail cell for 10 years so he could be free and vows to defend Naoirse, even if it means giving Arló away. Ellis also gives Georgia an ultimatum when she discovers that Liam is sleeping with her niece under her own roof. But, even though she resents the `Brits Out' sentiment in the lyrics (and in JJ's posterior ink), Georgia refuses to break off the relationship.
After Kneecap play in a hall in which Prince William had spoken the night before, the band make the local news and they are condemned by the Democratic Unionist Party. But JJ is feeling the pressure, especially after Caitlin confronts Liam and Naoirse at a sports ground and warns them that their songs aren't helping the 6000 Irish speakers in the North. When his garage is torched, JJ becomes more stressed than ever. Nevertheless, he still sneaks the boys into the music room at school to record a demo for an RTE radio plugger before telling them he's quitting.
Shortly afterwards, R-RAD order Naoirse and Liam to stop the music and focus on selling drugs because the price of semtex has gone through the roof and they are radical republicans before they're anti-drug campaigners. By contrast, JJ is fired for his part in the band and Caitlin leaves him (despite still loving him) because she feels Kneecap is harming her Irish language cause.
The lads put their hope in RTE playing the track and are crushed when the lyrics are deemed too racy. This proves too much for Dolores, who braves the great outdoors to rally the mothers of West Belfast behind the band and they start calling phone-ins making accusations of censorship, as ticket sales for an upcoming gig `sell out faster than Michael Collins'. As Liam cracks in narration, the forces against Kneecap had conspired to make them more popular than ever. Even Arló comes to the gig and eyeballs Naoirse from beneath his hoodie in the middle of the crowd.
Emboldened, JJ makes political statements in Irish and the boys play the recording of R-RAD leader, Doyle (Adam Best), threatening them. He's in the crowd and fires his gun, causing a stampede. Trying to help Liam and Naoirse escape, JJ gets clubbed by the PSNI. However, Liam trips and is arrested by Ellis, while Doyle captures Naoirse at gunpoint and bundles him into the boot of a car. At the police station, Ellis assaults Liam and informs him that she had the garage bombed because the high-ups were so unnerved by the music.
As Doyle and his oppos prepare to kneecap Naoirse, Arló appears and shoots them (revealing in the process that the wingmen are infiltrators). He tells his son that he is proud of his music and the impact he's having on the community and surrenders to the cops, so his family can have their lives back. Regaining her confidence, Dolores starts singing at the local pub, while Caitlin continue to campaign for an Irish Language Act. Kneecap become bigger than ever and the picture ends with Georgia attending an Irish class and a montage of clips from the real Kneecap scrapbook.
Fizzing from the first frame, this represents a fine feature bow by Rich Peppiatt, the non-Irish speaker who got to know Kneecap while directing the video for `Guilty Pleasures'. Cannily re-imagining the facts, the script is stuffed with zingers and can be cut plenty of slack for the odd misstep (like the video fast forward gag) because of the use of claymation during the RTE rep scene, a certain hate figure as a darts target, the Pythonesque R-RAD quip, and the superimposition of the head of Gerry Adams on to one of the band members during a pre-gig ketamine trip. But Peppiatt (who even slips in a `shit Beatles' joke) merits the Richard Lester Award for the Best Direction of Musicians Acting For the First Time for the edgily relaxed performances he coaxes out of Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, and JJ Ó Dochartaigh as themselves.
The supporting cast is admirable, with Josie Walker being gutsily deadpan as the nail-hard cop and Fionnuala Flaherty bringing touching humanity to the activist who values her man's happiness as much as her cause. Michael Fassbender is something of a distraction as Arló, if only for the fact that he delivers so many of his lines in English while contending that every word in Irish is a bullet to the heart of the oppressor. But his presence links the film to Steve McQueen's Hunger (2008), which provides a sobering reminder that life in Ulster wasn't all Kneecap and Terri Hooley (the godfather of Northern Irish punk who was commemorated in Lisa Barros D'Sa and Glenn Leyburn's Good Vibrations, 2013).
Nicola Moroney's production design is subtly aware, while Ryan Kernaghan's camerawork is lively and innovative, with its visual energy being reinforced by the muscularly refined editing of Julian Ulrichs and Chris Gill. As the action is supposed to be so gleefully anarchic, the occasional structuring glitch becomes easily over-lookable and it would not be surprising if this quickly becomes a cult favourite. An Deireadh? Far from it!
CADEJO BLANCO.
During the 1940s, Hollywood used to make films about Latin America to bolster the government's `Good Neighbour' policy. Despite having the serious intention of preventing countries from allying with the wartime Axis, the majority of these pictures (largely produced by 20th Century-Fox) were frivolous Technicolor confections that exploited local landmarks, stereotypes, and musical styles, as well as the bombshell talents of Carmen Miranda.
Such patronising fripperies belong firmly in the past, with American directors now venturing south to make hard-hitting realist exposés like Joshua Marston's Maria Full of Grace (2004) and Cary Joji Fukunaga's Sin Nombre (2009). The latest to join this select band is Justin Lerner, who follows up Girlfriend (2010) and The Automatic Hate (2015) by heading to Guatemala for Cadejo Blanco (2021).
Sisters Sarita (Karen Martínez) and Bea (Pamela Martínez) live with their grandmother (Yolanda Coronado) in a poor part of Guatemala City. When Bea fails to come home from a night out at the club where boyfriend Andrés (Rudy Rodríguez) works as a weekend bartender, Sarita asks Augustín (Esteban Reynoso) - a lover who lives in a gated community - to cover for her and travels to his coastal hometown of Puerto Barrios after learning that he's a member of a clica gang.
Andrés supervises the little kids who make drug drops and he's far from pleased to see Sarita, who had tried flirting with him during a second trip to the bar. Using the name Ana Lucía, she spins him a yarn about an abusive father and he allows her to spend the night in his meagre digs. But he resents her snooping around in his stuff and pulls a gun when informing her that she wouldn't last five minutes on the streets. When she follows him to the gang's safe house, Damian (Brandon Lopez) also points a gun at her head, but she convinces him that she's desperate and will do whatever it takes to belong.
They drive her to an abandoned waterside building to meet the boss (Carlos Solis). He orders her to work as a prostitute, but Andrés suggests using her as bait to lure rival dealer Oliveiros (Juan Pablo Olyslager) away from his bodyguards so they can kill him. In a rush to get his kids to a birthday party, the boss agrees and Sarita is dressed and made-up by a couple of gang girls and taken to the bar, where the network of underage snitches and runners have discovered that Oliveiros is hanging out.
Maintaining her haughtily impassive demeanour, Sarita is brought to his table, where she explains that she is an escort from the capital who can promise him the best time. Coaxing him out of returning to his compound, Sarita takes Oliveiros to a hotel and makes excuses to use the bathroom so that she can text Andrés and Damian that he has switched rooms. Just as Oliveiros is about to rape her, they burst in and stab him before dumping his body in the swimming pool. Wrapped in a blanket and with her expression unchanged (but her eyes burning), Sarita follows behind, knowing that she is now in too deep to disappear and, perhaps, realising what might have happened to her sister.
Having sobbed in the shower, Sarita is surprised to get a round of applause from the rest of the gang and she kisses Andrés when they fool around in the swimming pool. She asks about his tattoos and learns he has lost both his parents and his beloved girlfriend, who simply disappeared. After returning from a hit with Damian, Sarita checks in on Andrés, who tells her how Bea had come to the house to offer to pay his debts to the boss, only to be sent home. No one has seen her since she was robbed on the bus and Sarita is just about to reveal her identity when Damian barges in to tell Andrés that the boss has ordered them to wipe out the local barber, who controls a rival gang and was behind Bea's disappearance.
As he knows the males in the clica, Sarita volunteers to do the hit and has to learn how to fire a gun. She poses as a customer's girlfriend and wounds the barber (Heriberto Ochoa) so she can ask what happened to the girl from the bus. Before he can speak, however, back-up shooter dash in to finish him off and photograph the corpse for proof. A sentimental song plays on the television and the hair clippers buzz on the tiled floor, as Sarita looks down on the dead man with contempt.
Congratulated by the boss, Sarita notices her accomplice whispering to the boss and becomes apprehensive when he asks Andrés and Damian to remain behind. In the middle of the night, she is abducted and bundled into the back of a van. It stops in the forest and Andrés unties her to curse her for fooling him. Chuntering about how he should have seen through her act sooner, he takes her at gunpoint to a ditch. Ordering her to climb down, he chucks her a bag and tells her to make sure no one sees her leave town. A white dog watches as she clambers out of the pit and (just as a black dog had done when she was about to join the gang), it bolts off at the sound of distant barking.
At the bus depot, the boss catches up with her and reminds her of his threat that anyone who disobeys must die. Promising to make amends, Sarita borrows his crash helmet at sits on the pillion of his motorbike. As she reaches an arm around his shoulder, she produces a knife from her waistband and stabs him in the neck. He crashes into the undergrowth, but Sarita emerges with a limp and makes it back to the bus station, where the credits roll over her profile, as she fights back tears of pain, relief, and sorrow.
Played with admirable intensity and grit by Colombian actress, Karen Martínez, and a supporting ensemble largely made up of non-professionals (including a number of gang members who tweaked their dialogue to give it a ring of truth), this is a laudable bid to examine the grim reality of everyday life for those caught up in Guatemala's clicas circuit. Lerner has clearly done his research and there is an authentic ring to the scenes in which young boys carry out their duties with an earnestness way beyond their years. The assassination set-pieces are also grippingly suspenseful. But Lerner's storytelling is often slipshod, while his characters lack depth and credibility. As Martínez makes Sarita so inscrutable, it's impossible to discern what is going through her mind when she risks so much to find her sister. But Lerner makes it far too easy for her to join the gang and earn the trust of its key lieutenants. The speed with which she goes from concerned sibling to calculated killer only exacerbates the misgivings with a scenario that falls short of the standard set by Lerner's sense of place and ability to create atmosphere.
He's aided in this regard by Argentine cinematographer, Roman Kasseroller, whose prowling widescreen visuals are rhythmically edited by Lerner and Cesar Diaz, a director who has played a significant part in Guatemala's overdue cinematic emergence. Jonatan Szer's skittish score also keeps the viewer on edge, as Sarita is forced to summon untapped levels of fortitude, street-smarts, and resourcefulness in order to survive, let alone avenge her sister. This mission explains the presence of the dogs, as a local superstition about canine-shaped `cadejo' spectres has it that black dogs are harbingers of poor decisions, while white hounds are the guardians of those with justified grievances. This symbolism is rather in keeping with the overall approach, as it's neat enough, but feels somewhat fanciful and forced.
SWAN SONG.
There was a time when ballet documentaries were all the rage, as Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine's Ballets Russes (2005) was followed by Beadie Finzi's Only When I Dance, Frederick Wiseman's La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (both 2009), Bess Kargman's First Position (2011), Nelson George's A Ballerina's Tale, Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai's Reset (both 2015), and the Steve Cantor duo of Dancer (2016) and Ballet Now (2018). This period also witnessed profiles of Merce Cunningham, Pina Bausch, and Alvin Ailey. But the ballet doc comes roaring back with Chelsea McMullan's Swan Song, which chronicles the final eventful months of Karen Kain's tenure as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada.
Harking back two years from the backstage bustle of opening night, we see Karen Kain standing in front of the Andy Warhol portrait that she admits to disliking because of its glitter. She recalls how it came about after Rudolf Nureyev had taken her to The Factory after they had danced Swan Lake at the Metropolitan Opera. Now, as she's preparing to retire after five decades with the National Ballet of Canada, she feels compelled to make her directorial debut and stage a new interpretation of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's most famous ballet.
Covid-19 intervenes, however, and the company has to wait two years before they can finally take to the stage. The film-makers return to Toronto in the summer of 2022, with eight weeks to curtain up, and we meet Russian-Lithuanian principal dancer, Jurgita Dronina (and her husband and two - soon to be three - children), and corps de ballet member, Shaelynn Estrada, a 19 year-old, home-schooled, army brat Texan (who describes herself as `not white trash, but eggshell') and whose therapist orders her to make her own bed each morning.
Eager to avoid academicism and produce a moving piece of theatre, Kain has hired local choreographer Robert Binet to work with the corps to ensure that the swans make sense to young people and he relishes the challenge of doing something fresh with such a familiar work. Dancers Tene Ward and Selene Guerrero-Trujillo concur that the corps is key to the beauty of a ballet, while Arielle Miralles explains how much work goes into each step and pose.
Academic Seika Boye and critic Paula Citron are also sticklers for corps excellence. But we move on to explore the skills needed to convey the differences between Odette and Odile and the White and Black Swans. Kain is open to Dronina's ideas, as she rehearses with Harrison Wynn, but is set on imposing her own vision on the scenario. We learn about how the young Dronina had fled the Soviet Union as it collapsed and seized the opportunity to dance in Lithuania after her father had left the family on the streets. As husband Sergui Endinian confides, this traumatic experience shaped her as a person and as an artist.
Two weeks into rehearsals, Kain makes the decision to abandon the tradition of everyone in the corps wearing identical tights, as she has been made aware that dancers of colour find this degrading. She admits that she hadn't really considered this to be an issue, but is now eager to challenge the entrenched racism of the ballet world. Kain also promotes Genevieve Penn Nabity to cover the Swan Queen and Estrada admits to being jealous, even though she knows she's not yet at her level.
Estrada has had a tough time getting this far, as she has always had to work at her ballet schools in order to pay the fees. Half-Mexican, she has never felt she belonged in the place she loves most and Binet recognises this tendency to be hard on herself. But girlfriend Caroline Berry is certain that she will become a principal dancer, even though she's fond of a cigarette and a glass of wine.
With four weeks to go, Binet is trying to find a way to convey Kain's #MeToo idea that the evil Rothbart is the epitome of toxic masculinity and gets off on turning women into swans and manipulating him in the same way that he does the weather. It's a bold concept and Binet needs to have the corps dance in a manner that suggest swelling tempests.
Injuries trust the 18 year-old Kain into the limelight during a 1971 US-touring production of Swan Lake and she has always associated the ballet with stress. Being Nureyev's protégée came with more pressure and she recalls falling out of love with ballet after he moved on. Similarly, she has felt enormous responsibility for repaying the National Ballet of Canada for what it has given her and she had to pull the company out of debt on becoming artistic director. Now she's about to leave, the realisation that the connection of a lifetime is about to be broken hits her and she becomes emotional.
As a Black Australian, Ward has fought racism in ballet throughout her career. She is right behind the `no tights' decision, but other dancers feel uncomfortable with slippery bare legs and being so exposed on stage. Kain remains committed to the idea, as she attends rehearsals, although we see no interaction between her and the corps, as she conveys her ideas and instructions through Binet, who is desperate to please her, as she has always been his mentor and he is very much in behoven to her.
Estrada has a particular concern about showing her legs, as she cut herself during a depressive episode in which she felt that everyone hated her. Berry laments that she loves ballet so much, but doesn't always feel the passion being reciprocated. Dronina also has an issue she keeps to herself, as she has a nerve injury that induces spasms and she will need injections to get her through the production. She explains that the pain is excruciating, but she can't contemplate quitting, as ballet is her identity.
A fortnight from the premiere, production designer Gabriela Tylesova flies in to inspire awe in the craft departments. The dancers rehearse in costume for the first time and discover how heavy or constricting they are. Looking on, Kain is aware that things need to come together quickly, as much is still wrong and the tightness of the schedule is starting to impact on the bodies of the exhausted corps members.
Five days out, the company moves to the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Sets are in place and teething problems arise from acclimatisation, with Dronina feeling frustrated because corps elements are hampering her performance. Kain admits that directing is an onerous task, but maintains a reassuring air that isn't always entirely convincing. At least understudy Penn Nabity impresses during her short time on stage after everyone else has gone home.
With problems remaining unresolved two days from the opening, Estrada admits to murmurings among the corps that chaos is just a misstep away. Terrified that her body will give out and her career will be over, Dronina is also anxious about the staging. Yet, Kain retains her faith that this will be a unique version and that the moments of human vulnerability are central to its meaning and success. Binet compares the process to dancing on a razor blade, as he needs to push the dancers, but also ensure that they don't get hurt.
Opening day arrives and Dronina benefits from a smaller injection that gives her complete freedom. Staff at the theatre are still wearing masks (as are some of the company), which adds to the surreality of the situation, as final preparations are made behind the scenes. Thirty months has gone into this night and Kain's actor-producer husband, Ross Petty, urges her to enjoy whatever comes out of the experience. Binet admits to feeling odd at having to pass his trust over to the dancers, as he can't correct them any longer. Wend, Estrada, and Dronina also have first night nerves, as they reflect on the sacrifices made by loved ones and themselves to get to this point in their lives.
Dancers do their warm-ups, as the audience members take their seats. The orchestra tunes (we've only heard a piano accompaniment up to now) and expectation rises, as the corps gathers in the wings. As the familiar strains of Tchaikovsky's sublime score rise and fall, the soundtrack finds space for the heavy breathing of the dancers as they recover from their exertions, the patter of their feet as they rush to costume changes, and the odd comment on how they feel the show is going. From the tumultuous reception at the curtain, it's clear that it has exceeded Kain's expectations and there is exhilaration amidst the relief that the performance has gone to plan.
After the curtain call, Kain thanks Dronina for her brilliance before praising the corps and debriefing with Binet and Tylesova. She had been expecting to let a few things slide en route to perfection in the second week, but a miracle has occurred and she is confident that they have achieved something significant. In asides, Tylesova, Wend, and Estrada confide their pride in their work and their hopes for the future. A coda shows Kain looking through some old clipping, as the credits roll over some young girls, of various shapes, sizes, and skin colours, starting out on their own journeys in a dance class before the screen fades to black on Kain's final moments on stage in her last Swan Lake.
Each choice feels right in this closing segment, as they do throughout a documentary that examines the back-breaking graft that goes into the ethereal beauty of a ballet and the stresses and strains endured by everyone in its making. As with a real swan, there's a lot going on beneath the water to affirm Estrada's closing contention that `Ballet is punk rock as fuck.'
Cinematographers Tess Girard and Shady Hanna deserve huge credit, as they switch between fluent and shaky handheld dance footage and between intimate close-ups and moments of detached observation. Editor Brendan Mills stitches the decisive snippets from 450 recorded hours with aplomb, as archive and talking-head material is woven into the mix. However, it's the restraint shown by McMullan and co-writer Sean O'Neill in resisting the obvious plotlines and revealing just enough of Kain, Dronina, and Estrada's backstories to give the `putting on a show' core some human foundations.
Neve Campbell, an alumna of the National Ballet of Canada who starred in Robert Altman's The Company (2003), brings her own experience as executive producer. But McMullan seems wholly in control and it would be intriguing to see where the four-part TV series goes, as there are moments when the feature feels a little rushed and leaves the viewer with unanswered questions, particularly about Dronina's rags-to-riches story, Estrada's mental health, and Wend's insights into racism in ballet. We might also get to spend more time with the graciously patient and winningly empathetic Binet, as well as the dresser who adores her job, the wigmaker with an acerbic tongue, the scenery setters, the security guards, the house staff, and the physios, who are seen in passing as the company tries to re-establish itself after the pandemic. There might even be room to mention the accompanist and show how the company and the orchestra come together after weeks of isolation. For now, though, this fine 103-minute edition will have to suffice.
NOAH'S ARK.
Less than a decade after Toby Genkel's Two By Two (aka Ooops! Noah is Gone..., 2015), a second CGI animated account of the biblical deluge has washed up on UK screens. Made in Brazil, Alois Di Leo and Sergio Machado's Noah's Ark is subtitled, `A Musical Adventure', and contains several songs inspired by the poems of Vinicius de Moraes.
Having played in another empty venue, musical mice Tom (Marcelo Adnet) and Vini (Rodrigo Santoro) are beginning to doubt whether they are going to make it big. Unable to sleep, they overhear a conversation between God (Luis Bermudez) and Noah (Ian James Corlett) and learn that two of every animal will be spared on a large wooden ark when the world is flooded. Noah has lots of practical questions, but God tells him to work things out for himself.
Hoping to get round the stipulation that a male and a female will be chosen, Tom and Vini resort to drag. But Nina mouse (Alice Braga) is adamant that she will be aboard and Noah forces Vini to leave, despite Tom's pleas that they're best friends. Granddaughter Susana (Laila McCann) takes pity on the pair, but Ruth (Debra Wilson) echoes her husband in insisting that God's rules must be obeyed.
Although he's cast away, Vini finds a berth on a boat with Alfonso the cockroach (Christopher Corey Smith) and various other stragglers. It's choppy, but they remain afloat and keep the ark in sight. All is not well below deck, however, as Baruk (Keith Silverstein) the lion has forged alliances with a bear, a gorilla, and a pair of hyenas in order to assume control of the animals. He informs his cohorts that they should chomp their way through the provisions that Noah has stored away before embarking on the biggest all-you-can-eat buffet ever.
His reign doesn't get off to a good start, however, as in trying to break into the food hold, he succeeds only in making a hole in the side of the vessel that Noah only just manages to repair. The breach, however, allows Alfonso's boat to wash aboard and Tom is delighted to be reunited with Vini - until he realises that he has a crush on Nina. Eager to bolster his status, Baruk asks Billy the Goat (Mark Lewis) to come up with a plan and he suggests a song contest, with the animal that wins the most votes becoming the leader of the pack.
Meanwhile, Noah has decided to send Sonia the dove (Triya Leong) to find some dry land. As she is an inexperienced flier, however, Kilgore the swallow (Bermudez) is allowed to accompany her. After several days with no luck, they land on what turns out to be a pink whale (Misty Lee), who offers to help them with their search. Back on the ark, Noah is feeling unwell and Ruth nurses him, while Susana helps with the singing contest. Vini and Tom are convinced they will win because their songs are so good. But Alfonso seizes the opportunity to make a little profit by selling some of the songs to other competitors.
This doesn't help Baruk, however, as his voice is terrible, even when backed by a couple of rattlesnakes. So, he hits upon the idea of kidnapping Nina and forcing Tom and Vini to hide behind a curtain and sing for him (as he excels at lip synching). When the contest begins, Baruk becomes frustrated because other animals are selected to perform before him. Eventually, he forces his way on to the stage. But Nina is rescued and the curtain is pulled back mid-song to expose Baruk's chicanery.
At that moment, the ark begins to break up. Fortunately, however, everyone is saved because Kilgore and Sonia have found land and returned to inform Noah. Much to Ruth and Susana's relief, he regains his strength in time to lead his charges into their new paradise.
Competently animated, despite sometimes struggling with the dimensions and layout of the ark, this is firmly aimed at younger viewers living in the modern world. Jokes abound about selfies and things going viral, while accompanying grown-ups will pick up on the references to fake news and Baruk's Trumpian tendency to mangle words. They may have to field some awkward questions on the way home, however, ranging from why was God so mean as to destroy the planet (in Susana's words, `He's lost it!') to why did the animals have to be male and female with no non-binary exemptions, and how was humankind going to survive when Susana was the only young female and the father of any children was going to be either her grandfather or her uncle?
Moving swiftly on, the bullish voicework compensates for the lack of character in the creature designs that too often have an eye on other animal animations. Indeed, there is a sense of borrowedness to much of the picture, with Baruk being far too similar to Scar in The Lion King (1994) and Tom and Vini owing much to Scrat from Ice Age (2002). Thankfully, despite the blatant biblical spin on Sing (2016), the Vinicius de Moraes ditties are splendid. But, for all its good intentions and the prestige involved, this always feels like an odd project for Walter Salles and co-director Sergio Machado, who is known for weightier fare like Lower City (2005), The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell (2010), and The Violin Teacher (2015).
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