Son of Bigfoot is the latest kids film about Bigfoot, a sub-genre that has a long lineage after the great Harry and the Hendersons was a surprise hit in the late ’80s. Bigfoot: The Unforgettable Encounter and Little Bigfoot 1 and 2 are the ones I remember the most from when I was a kid who would devour any Bigfoot film. I was sent an email about the possibility of reviewing Son of Bigfoot, and for fun I jumped at the chance.
Animated Bigfoot films are rarer than live action ones, but before Son of Bigfoot there was The Legend of Sasquatch (which is the Native American name for Bigfoot), which despite having William Hurt’s voice talents is probably the worst-looking computer-generated animated film of all time. Son of Bigfoot was made by nWave pictures, which is a Belgian-American animation studio that has had some success in recent years.
As the title suggests, it’s about this lonely outsider kid, Adam, who goes on a quest to find his dad. His father is said to have been missing all his life. He is bullied in school, but is also on the cusp of puberty. When he gets a haircut but his hair magically grows back, he starts having questions… However, he is in for quite the shock when his pop turns out to be Bigfoot, and he finds out that Bigfoot has some powers, like the ability to talk to animals and some kind of healing ability. However, the multi-national corporation HairCo. wants to run experiments on Bigfoot because of his rapid hair growth. The notion of shady scientists wanting to experiment on Bigfoot is a common trope in these films, and such is also the case in Bigfoot: The Unforgettable Encounter.
Overall, it’s a decent CGI-animated film. It was a small CGI production that came in around the 30 million mark. Interestingly, they didn’t go for including any major stars to voice the actors, which is of course common in CGI films. It does have a decent message—a kid accepting his differences—and it even has a bit of subtle political commentary on the perils of Big Pharma, and a fun little dig at Donald Trump. It’s probably the best film so far about the results of Bigfoot mating rituals with humans.
★★★
Ian Schultz
psychotroniccinema.com 