Mixed reviews for Waititi film

New Zealand director Taika Waititi's feature film Boy premiered to a sell-out audience at the opening of the Sundance Film Festival in Utah at the weekend.

Boy was among 14 films selected from more than 1000 submitted for Sundance's World Cinema Dramatic Competition. Inspired by Waititi's Oscar-nominated short Two Cars, One Night, it is a coming-of-age tale about heroes, magic and Michael Jackson.

Written and directed by Waititi, the film was the debut feature for leading young actor James Rolleston, who was given a standing ovation when he joined Waititi at the end of the screening.

Early reviews from US media said the film "marked a new step up in maturity for the New Zealand director" and "Boy succeeds as both an ode to childhood and a lament about growing up".

But the feature has won no fans at the offices of industry bible Variety magazine. Reviewer Peter DeBruge described Boy as "a let-down second feature ... more cult than commercial".

"Characters come first in Waititi's stylised pre-adolescent flashback - which is a nice way of saying that the writer-director ... hasn't bothered to invent much of a plot."

A "certain heaviness lurks beneath the surface in Boy", DeBruge said, while Waititi "uses costumes and art direction to ratchet the early-80s kitsch to near-suffocating levels".

- NZPA