Who knows; maybe there has been a clamour out there for a follow up to the 2017 animation The Jungle Bunch? I have to confess I couldn’t remember if I’d seen it when I sat down in front of this sequel: then a penguin waddled on to the screen painted with tiger stripes, and the memories clawed their way back in. The original was a relentlessly wacky nonsensical adventure about a gang of animal chums saving their forest from a pyromaniacal koala. The kind of targeted-at-under-fives mayhem that Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda pulled off better.
This frenetic sequel gives out more of the same. This time around, Maurice the penguin and his pals are up against a villainous beaver (if you haven’t seen the original, Maurice is painted with orange stripes because he’s an orphan and was raised by a tiger). The beaver’s diabolical plan is to destroy the jungle with a toxic purple foam, for reasons never explained. Maurice and his crime-fighting critters need to concoct an antidote – which involves stealing a rare ingredient from a creepy cult called the Sacred Circle of Stink.
It’s bonkers – and not in a giddy fun way. The humour is all snark and butt jokes, and the script also goes there with an inter-species romance between the penguin and an armadillo. Which is icky, and way off target for pre-schoolers: “I was burning to talk to you Maurice.” The films in the franchise are based on a hit French kids’ series, and have that cheap look of low-rent shows chucked on to streaming sites as filler. For adults, it’s an assault on the nerves: like being at a four-year-old’s birthday party at home time, when the cake has been devoured, the kids are in tantrum mode and everyone’s just discovered there are no party bags.
• The Jungle Bunch World Tour is released on 9 February in UK cinemas.
