Growing up in New Zealand, 11-year-old Boy (James Rolleston) is a chronic bully target, Michael Jackson fanatic and inveterate dreamer who lives with his grandmother, his little brother and an assortment of young cousins. He’s so poor he can’t even envision what it would be like to be rich: He thinks it would involve riding dolphins and wearing a tuxedo every day.
When Boy’s goofy outlaw father shows up, fresh out of prison, the dad and the two sons are soon playing soldier and digging up a nearby field, where treasure is supposedly buried. But in the meantime, the father is happy to hang around the house spinning tales, wearing an old army surplus helmet and insisting on being called Shogun.
This charming kid’s-eye movie, full of comical and vivid detail about the lives of these cheerful children, has the loose, lanky feel of a memoir and of French New Wave films. Writer-director Taika Waititi, who also plays the exasperating, inept and semi-lovable dad, adroitly mixes pathos with absurdity. Like childhood itself, though, the film lacks much of a plot, and somehow manages both to drag on and feel too short at the same time.