Bigfoot, I Love You

Rumour has it a mysterious creature lives somewhere in the forests of northern France, near Normandy, to be precise. The creature is large, hairy, hard to photograph, loves opera, and may have telepathic abilities. This creature is of course ‘Le Grand Pied’ (or the anglicised ‘Bigfoot’), and is at the centre of the new irreverent Marcus Nash comedy Bigfoot, I Love You, a film which works as often as it doesn’t.

Zadie (Nikko Austen Smith) is a documentarian in Los Angeles. Her father has recently died, shot by a mysterious figure in those very same French forests, and she is trying to move on with her life. But it is difficult. Especially so when Zadie receives a distress call from Le Grand Pied. After some encouragement from her eccentric Uncle Shizzle (Ryan McCallister), Zadie and her Austrian cinematographer, Kaya (Alan Starzinski), head to France to uncover what resides amongst its woods. But when Zadie and Kaya arrive, they meet something far stranger than any cryptozoological beast: the local residents of Normandy.

There are a lot of characters in Bigfoot. Too many, perhaps. Much of the film’s brief runtime is spent introducing an assortment of eccentric locals: the uppity mayor and her reclusive sister, the gruff farmer, the Ace of Base-loving bartender, the sage-smoking pop singer, and so on. Some encounters are genuinely funny, such as a brief exchange with a feederist clog maker who has a proposition for Kaya, but many fall flat. The characterisations are often too cursory to sustain a joke, resulting in a series of mundane encounters spiked with a little Brooks-ian wackiness that always stops just short of fully embracing the ridiculous.

There are some standouts within this expansive cast, though. Presumably real-life sisters Juliet and Madeleine Robb as the warring mayoral siblings strike the perfectly zany tone, while McCallister steals every scene as the rambunctious Uncle Shizzle. Austen Smith holds her own as both the only sane person on screen and a reliable foil for everyone around her. And while Starzinski’s deadpan drawl occasionally lands, Kaya remains frustratingly ill-defined, shifting into whatever character the moment requires. Visually, however, the film is consistently assured, with a vibrancy that suits its outlandish story. The editing is similarly effective, maintaining a brisk pace without rushing its strongest comic moments.

Where Bigfoot stumbles is in its script, which never quite fulfils its lofty ambitions. After a promising opening, the film settles into a repetitive rhythm that grows tiresome, while its finale offers little justification for the time spent introducing its vast array of characters.

So while it has its moments of brilliance, thanks to some excellent performances, Bigfoot, I Love You is ultimately less memorable than one would hope. For a film about a creature that is supposedly impossible to pin down, its comedy proves frustratingly easy to anticipate.