Riki Rhino
What good is a rhino without a horn?
There’s a rhino in Sumatra named Riki who can show you, in the delightful Indonesian animated film “Riki Rhino.” The film was made in 2020, but is only now being released digitally and on DVD in an English version.
Riki (voiced in English by Jennifer Castle) loses his horn to the horrible human poacher Mr. Jak (voice of Zack Lee), and sets out with his buddy Beni the duck (voice of Paul Reynolds) to get it back.
I can’t recall seeing another Indonesian animated film – but I must say this is up there among the most delightful of the animated films I have seen.
Beni and Riki have many adventures in their lush surroundings, including running off a cliff and ending up in the river, encounters with the King of the Jungle, who ends up needing help when he gets tied to a tree, and running into elephants like the old one called General, who informs Beni that white thing of his is not a horn but a tusk and therefore not what Riki needs.
But General says he also knows a master healer “who can grow anything.”
The message here is that animals, unlike bad humans, are cooperative and helpful to one another.
The animals bump into porcupines and more bad men (there don’t seem to be any good humans in this place).
But when the baddies start threatening the environment by cutting down trees, the animals put their feet down (so to speak) and come up with a most charming solution.
Director Edwin Budiono keeps the pace moving, with help from the charming screenplay by Cassandra Massardi (from a story by Jony Yuwono). All this and unfettered (except by those nasty humans) nature scenes to boot? What are you waiting for?
No comments:
Post a Comment