Bigfoot Junior – The Son of Bigfoot (2017)

Directed by: Jeremy Degruson, Ben Stassen | 92 minutes | animation, comedy | Dutch voice cast: Buddy Vedder, Nicolette Kluijver, Dennis Weening, Kim-Lian van der Meij, Dio | Original voice cast: Pappy Faulkner, Christopher L. Parson, Marieve Herington, Joe Ochman, Sandy Fox, Joe Thomas, Michael Sorich, Yuri Lowenthal, Kyle Hebert, David Epstein, Jeff Doucette, Joey Camen,

‘Bigfoot Junior’, or as the film has been released internationally ‘The Son of Bigfoot’, is about the teenage boy Adam. Adam lives alone with his mother – his father died in an accident years ago, he was told. Adam is not very popular, he is bullied at school by three bullies (a ‘main’ bully and two sidekicks, what else?!). They take every opportunity to make life miserable for him. His wild hair makes him an easy target. When Adam comes home one day with pieces of gum in his hair, his mother cuts it short. Much to Adam’s shock, it all grew back the next day. Not much later he finds out – thanks to an action by his bullies – that his father is still alive: in a well-hidden biscuit tin he finds letters that his father has recently written to his mother. When he confronts his mother about this, they get into a fight, because Adam is an adolescent and cannot be reasoned with… That night he decides to run away: he goes in search of his father!

What Adam doesn’t know (yet) is that his father is none other than Bigfoot, a legendary and, according to some, mythical figure who has almost never been seen in real life. However, when Adam Bigfoot is registered on a truck driver’s dashcam, the news that Bigfoot exists quickly spreads and HairCo, a company that has been searching for Bigfoot’s DNA for years, starts ringing all the alarm bells. HairCo was also responsible for the disappearance of Adam’s father at the time. To protect his family, he made the difficult choice to go into hiding in the dense forests of North America. And meanwhile, Adam has already met his father, whom he last saw as a toddler and can’t remember. The shock is great when it turns out that his father is Bigfoot. Why can’t he have a normal father now? But of course the advantages quickly outweigh the disadvantages.

Just after Adam and his dad have determined that Adam also has Bigfoot DNA in him, and some funny father-son moments have taken place in which Bigfoot shows his son the superhero-like possibilities of being Bigfoot , HairCo appears on the scene. And Adam’s mother. Will the family manage to stay out of the hands of the megalomaniac hair-growth manufacturer and if that doesn’t work: will they ever be free again? To ask the question is to answer it, because in this child-friendly video everything goes by the book.

However, that does not mean that this film is not worth watching. Visually everything is fine. nWave Pictures by Belgian filmmaker Ben Stassen has now mastered (3D) animation well, after ‘Flying to the moon’ (‘Fly Me to the Moon’) (2008) this is their seventh animation film and the upward trend in the field of animation is still being held. Although the story unfolds as we know from countless other animated and family films, ‘Bigfoot Junior’ has its heart in the right place and the entertainment value is more than sufficient. The moral is not too thick and empathizing with the adventures of Adam, his