Director – Lin Huida – 2024 – China – Cert. PG – 105m
***1/2
The Boonie Bears’ friend Vick is tricked into giving up his memories of the bears in exchange for working at an office job far away in the city – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, September 13th
Although it works perfectly well as a standalone film, Time Twist is an odd place to start for anyone new to China’s long-running Boonie Bears franchise because the Boonie Bears are here relegated to secondary character status in a story about their friend Vick (once again voiced in the English language version by Paul ‘Maxx’ Rinehart). Here he’s introduced as ‘the logger’ who first fell in and became friends with the Bears (in what those already familiar with the franchise will know as their Pine Tree Mountain forest / national park home) before becoming, as a slogan hand-stamped on the image puts it, a ‘Certified Loser’.
He boards the bus to nearby Shen City, after momentarily looking wistfully at a flier on a telegraph pole reading ‘Lumberjacks / Hiring’. There, he picks up a job as an intern in an office, where his computer keyboard skills and overall ingenuity get his ‘intern’ tag replaced by one for ‘engineer’. On the phone to his parents outside work hours, they complain he’s working too hard. His friendship with the Boonie Bears are little more than dreams when he sleeps.
His boss Julie (voice: Nicola Vincent) is feared by him and his fellow employees and prone to mete out harsh treatment for anyone arriving late to work, surprises him by asking him to accompany her on a trip to win the confidence of new client Mr. Maguire (voice: Chris Boike) who lives near Vick’s old Pine Tree Mountain stomping ground.
After the pair have navigated the undrinkable green tea and food of Maguire’s diminutive assistant Sonny (voice: Olivia Seaton-Hill), Maguire drags Vick into the WC (a highly questionable move in a children’s movie, but never mind) which turns out to be a lift which travels deep underground to Maguire’s labyrinth of laboratories, specifically a chair situated atop a column in a vast dome not unlike the torture chamber in Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985) into which Vick is unexpectedly strapped. Above him in the dome float shards, a broken hemisphere, of images from his memories of life with the Boonie Bears.
A memory: Vick is driving his car when Maguire drops onto his windscreen out of nowhere, takes him out for food and offers him a chance to get his life back from the impoverishment of his job looking after the bears. Vick’s memories of that time, it turns out, as stored on an old ‘memory bar’ which Maguire is currently in the slow process of having wiped, to rid Vick of those old memories and help him better himself without them dragging him down. Once that’s wiped, everyone Vick knew in that other timeline will cease to exist.
Vick escapes through a portal into a world where the Bears are being attacked by wolves, followed by both Sonny who is trying to rectify the effects of his escape and Julie who is less than happy that he is disrespecting the client. They are menaced by a dangerous, giant plant-like entity, which Sonny explains is the Time Gobbler. Sonny further explains that since the portal has closed, they are now trapped in this continuum.
Julie helps Vick put together a business strategy to win the Bears’ trust, which he puts into practice by helping Bramble (voice: Joseph S. Lambert) and Briar (voice: Patrick Freeman) escape from a giant spider. Although the bears have only just met him, they feel as if they’ve known Vick forever.
A portal takes Vick to once again catch the bus to Shen City, this time with a different driver, since the role was previously filled by Maguire before the audience had any idea who he was. The narrative then flashes through his meteoric corporate career rise, and also shows Julie treading a similar path, working so hard that while there, she barely has any time for her dad until after his death, when she visits his gravestone. “What is it that defines us as successful?”, she asks – as well she might in the circumstances.
As Vick’s strange adventure continues, will he be able to get his old life back and regain his friendship with the bears? Given that the Boonie Bears franchise shows little chance of abating, you can probably guess the answer to that, but what you might not be prepared for is a scene towards the end where he and Julie cross paths without her having the slightest idea who he is.
Curiously, one of the strongest aspects of the film, in line with the franchise’s continuing promotion of the virtues of nature and living away from the city in the countryside, is its brutal portrayal of office culture and lengthy working hours destroying workers’ lives. There may not be anything especially original or radical about this, but it certainly stays with you after the film ends.
Those familiar with earlier outings will recognise brief appearances by the arms dealer couple (!) and Avi the alien from Boonie Bears Back To Earth, Lin Huida, 2022).
Although it seems content to explore science fiction themes, the film is not as well-plotted as either of its two predecessors, at times using the time travel and travelling through portals devices as an excuse to do almost anything. Still, it typically has a momentum which keeps it going, and you’ll never be bored.
In terms of the English language voice cast, the production company once again draws on a regular pool of English-speaking actors to play numerous bit parts, among them Joseph S. Lambert, Chris Boike, Olivia Seaton-Hill, Nicola Vincent, Siobhan Lumsden, Ruth Urquhart and Kieran Katarey (who voiced Briar in Boonie Bears Back To Earth). As with other recent films in the franchise, the English language voice dub is excellent.
Boonie Bears Time Twist is out in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on Friday, September 13th.
Trailer:
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