Boonie Bears: Time Twist review - Chinese animation takes kids’ series into sci-fi yarn

If you’re a card-carrying member of the substantial fanbase of the Chinese animated television series Boonie Bears, which has already spawned half a dozen feature films, you probably know more or less what you’re getting into here. If you’re new to it, welcome to the life of two bears and their friend Vick, a former logger. This adventure focuses on Vick, and explores the road less travelled, via an alternative-realities-slash-time-travel plot involving wispy guardians of the timelines and mad scientist hocus pocus gone awry.

Say what you will about the likes of more traditional “what if” stories such as A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, but they do at least keep things simple. Boonie Bears: Time Twist is nothing if not convoluted. Perhaps the baroque storytelling wouldn’t matter so much if the thing had any wit about it, but it’s difficult to discern from this entry why this set of characters have been quite so successful. The humour falls pretty flat; the big gags are around moments like the boss turning out to be standing behind Vick when he’s doing an impression of her, or a character serving up unappetising soup which somebody has to eat out of politeness.

There’s zero edge or charm here and it’s hard to believe that the English-language dubbing has either added or taken away much in that regard; most of the voicework is pretty grating, but then most of the characters are pretty grating too. The animation itself isn’t particularly appealing either, save for a bit of nice world-building during some time-travel shenanigans – at one point the characters become tiny, Honey I Shrunk the Kids style, and landscapes like a meadow full of beautiful giant dandelions have a certain prettiness to them. It’s nothing you couldn’t find equalled by the average preprogrammed set of computer screensavers, though. Overall, perhaps, this is best left to hardcore Boonie Bears fanatics.

• Boonie Bears: Time Twist is in UK and Irish cinemas from 13 September.