My Life as McDull (2001) is a cartoon from Hong Kong
about a pig who attends Kindergarten with a cast of cute animals
including a cow named May and a hippo named June. It’s also a very
melancholy story about a grown man (well, pig) with muscular calves
looking back at the complex relationship he had with his hard-working,
obsessive, but very loving single mother.
McDull doesn’t really have much of a plot, just a series of incidents. While in labor, Mrs. McBing is visited by a magical flying pan. Since this sort of thing happens all the time in Chinese folklore, Mrs. McBing makes a wish that her son will be very intelligent. When the pan doesn’t respond, she amends the wish, asking that he become a smart businessman. Still no response, so she tries again, asking that her son be as handsome as Chow Yun Fat or Tony Leung. The pan still doesn’t respond, so she tries one last time, simply asking that her son will always be lucky. At last the pan falls to the floor, and she knows that her wish has been granted, but she isn’t sure which wish. To honor the event, she’s about to name her son McNificent, but decides it’s better to be humble and names him McDull instead.
After this, we get a glimpse into daily life for mother and son (including a brilliant sequence where McDull imagines his mother’s job a s a video game), and then we get a series of incidents. Inspired by a commercial, McDull becomes obsessed with visiting the Maldives, and when he falls sick, Mrs. McBing promises him a vacation she can’t afford to inspire him to recover. McDull tries to become a champion windsurfer in order to make his mother proud, and winds up being trained in the forgotten sport of bun snatching. McDull dreams about eating Christmas turkey, and then has to deal with the leftovers.
The stories sound very simple, and they are. This is very much a character piece, and what happens is only important to the extent that it helps to illuminate the relationship between McDull and Mrs. McBing. It’s like seeing Angela’s Ashes acted out by the cast of Hello Kitty, and it’s remarkably good.
The character designs in McDull are very simple, stylized, and cute without being nauseatingly so. McDull and his fellow students are all animals, and (with the exception of Mrs. McBing) all of the adults are human. (Notably, all the male adult authority figures in McDull’s life - his Principal, his doctor, his bun-snatching sifu - all look exactly the same.) The environment is photo realistic, three dimensional, and computer generated, and the film uses the contrast in styles to good effect.
There’s no sex in McDull, and no violence apart from the (rather tame) video game sequence. There’s no real reason why you couldn’t show this movie to children, but I’m really not sure what they’d get out of it. To fully appreciate McDull, I think you need to be old enough to have some idea of just how much your parents have done for you. At heart, this is a very adult cartoon.
(A footnote. McDull is based on a series of comics which is apparently hugely popular in Hong Kong, and is itself spun off of another hugely popular comics series about McDull’s cousin McMug (who appears in the movie, but doesn’t do much.) I’ve never read any of the comics, so I have no idea how faithful the film is. A sequel to the cartoon was released in 2004, and is currently sitting on my shelf; I’ll be watching it later this week.)
McDull doesn’t really have much of a plot, just a series of incidents. While in labor, Mrs. McBing is visited by a magical flying pan. Since this sort of thing happens all the time in Chinese folklore, Mrs. McBing makes a wish that her son will be very intelligent. When the pan doesn’t respond, she amends the wish, asking that he become a smart businessman. Still no response, so she tries again, asking that her son be as handsome as Chow Yun Fat or Tony Leung. The pan still doesn’t respond, so she tries one last time, simply asking that her son will always be lucky. At last the pan falls to the floor, and she knows that her wish has been granted, but she isn’t sure which wish. To honor the event, she’s about to name her son McNificent, but decides it’s better to be humble and names him McDull instead.
After this, we get a glimpse into daily life for mother and son (including a brilliant sequence where McDull imagines his mother’s job a s a video game), and then we get a series of incidents. Inspired by a commercial, McDull becomes obsessed with visiting the Maldives, and when he falls sick, Mrs. McBing promises him a vacation she can’t afford to inspire him to recover. McDull tries to become a champion windsurfer in order to make his mother proud, and winds up being trained in the forgotten sport of bun snatching. McDull dreams about eating Christmas turkey, and then has to deal with the leftovers.
The stories sound very simple, and they are. This is very much a character piece, and what happens is only important to the extent that it helps to illuminate the relationship between McDull and Mrs. McBing. It’s like seeing Angela’s Ashes acted out by the cast of Hello Kitty, and it’s remarkably good.
The character designs in McDull are very simple, stylized, and cute without being nauseatingly so. McDull and his fellow students are all animals, and (with the exception of Mrs. McBing) all of the adults are human. (Notably, all the male adult authority figures in McDull’s life - his Principal, his doctor, his bun-snatching sifu - all look exactly the same.) The environment is photo realistic, three dimensional, and computer generated, and the film uses the contrast in styles to good effect.
There’s no sex in McDull, and no violence apart from the (rather tame) video game sequence. There’s no real reason why you couldn’t show this movie to children, but I’m really not sure what they’d get out of it. To fully appreciate McDull, I think you need to be old enough to have some idea of just how much your parents have done for you. At heart, this is a very adult cartoon.
(A footnote. McDull is based on a series of comics which is apparently hugely popular in Hong Kong, and is itself spun off of another hugely popular comics series about McDull’s cousin McMug (who appears in the movie, but doesn’t do much.) I’ve never read any of the comics, so I have no idea how faithful the film is. A sequel to the cartoon was released in 2004, and is currently sitting on my shelf; I’ll be watching it later this week.)
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