Cute Little Buggers (2017)

There’s a reason why sometimes a one off joke is used just once. It’s because stretching it out destroys the momentum of the joke. Someone behind “Cute Little Buggers” loved the scene in “The Holy Grail” involving the man eating cute rabbit and decided to turn it in to a horrendous horror comedy. Not that I have anything against movies that take inspiration from Monty Python, but when they have a rhyme or reason, and an actual good idea, I’m all for it. But “Cute Little Buggers” seems centered on the premise of one joke that one joke that gets boring after being used repeatedly mainly since the joke just isn’t that funny in the beginning, anyway.

Someone just looks down at our film’s monster, coos “Isn’t that a cute bugger?” and they’re then violently eaten. At first I found it slightly amusing, but it just gets so tiresome by the third time someone mutters what becomes the crutch of the whole of the film. To make things worse, the creatures themselves aren’t even all that interesting, with the monsters presented as CGI models of rabbits that grow fang covered maws like Venus Flytraps; and badly animated ones at that. Melchior returns to his hometown in England to deliver the news of his mother’s death to his long lost father. Sadly, as the reunion is bitter, Melchior learns that his high school love Rose is engaged to a pompous jerk named Charles.

Meanwhile aliens are hovering above Earth kidnapping their women and impregnating them for the sake of spawning new monsters. As a town festival ensues, the discovery of mutilated bodies hasn’t stopped the mayor who insists on keeping the annual celebration going.  When Rose comes under danger by the alien kidnappers, Melchior has to save her and fight off the evil spawn. “Cute Little Buggers” seems to commit all the errors of monster movies, as it’s too long, convoluted, and spends at least twenty minutes of screen time before we ever see the film’s titular monsters. What we do see though, are some well made, but dull aliens that are watching the villainous monsters wreak havoc from above almost like a weak take off of “The Simpsons” Halloween episodes.

I don’t bemoan Tony Jopia for wearing his influences on his sleeves, but “Cute Little Buggers” suffers for taking from what inspired it, and using them ad nauseum. I went in to “Cute Little Buggers” hoping for a schlocky take on “Night of the Lepus,” or perhaps a neat twist on the mini monsters run amok genre. Sadly, Jopia’s bad writing, and direction, matched with the awful acting, droning narrative, and downright awful title monsters make “Cute Little Buggers” a chore to sit through. I love “so bad it’s good,” it’s just sad that the film is so bad–and that’s about it.