With this family animation, Mexican film-making brothers Gabriel and Rodolfo Riva Palacio Alatriste put young and old alike through a gruelling ordeal of headachey hyperactive visuals and flatlining gags. This 2021 film is the latest instalment of their Little Eggs franchise, getting a UK release presumably to cash in on the Easter school holidays. Though to be honest, I’d take two weeks locked inside a soft-play centre with a class of Year Ones over sitting through it again.
The story begins on a farm in Mexico where rooster Toto has become the proud dad of two adorable eggs: a boy and a girl who pop out with legs and arms, wearing matching sneakers and talking. I was puzzled by the egg aspect of the film: is it weird that Toto’s sprogs are talking eggs, not hatched chicks? Bizarrely, other eggs in the coop are clearly adults. Has something gone freakishly wrong with embryo development on this farm?
But internal logic is the least of the film’s problems. It just keeps on getting worse as Toto turns into an overprotective dad who sees danger around every corner. Then along comes an actual baddie: the Duchess, a Cruella de Vil knock-off who drives into town with a couple of goons. She kidnaps Toto’s babies for her mysterious boss, the Baron, who intends to serve them up at the world’s most exclusive banquet at his Bond-villain style lair in the Congo.
So the eggs are loaded on to a plane along with other rare specimens; there’s a crocodile egg and an eagle egg too. Despite a good deal of U-rated action on the bumpy flight, not one of them cracks. Like I said, the egg side of things makes no sense. I’d give my six-year-old a sporting chance of writing a script that hangs together better.
• Little Eggs: An African Rescue is released on 31 March in UK and Irish cinemas.
