The Hugga BunchApparently Ponce de León had it wrong--the secret to eternal youth is just hugging. The Hugga Bunch is a glorified commercial posing as a children's film for a line of plush dolls meant to compete with Cabbage Patch Kids during the mid-Eighties. The movie borderline plagiarizes other films like it, and turns into an unintentional comedy, filled with hysterically awkward and unlikely dialogue, in addition to the disarmingly odd and stiff, ambulating dolls. Our heroine, a seven year-old girl named Bridget Severson (Gennie James), is invited to visit HuggaLand by stepping through her bedroom mirror by the self-professed savoir-faire Huggins (Terry Castillo). Her mission is to find magic berries reputed to make someone young again, so that she can save her grandmother (Natalie Masters) from being sent to a home. (Bridget's fantasy quest suggests that she's off her medication again...)
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It's evident that The Hugga Bunch was developed as a television film for children from the start, with opening titles that recall an Eighties sitcom. With her slight Southern accent, Bridget speaks into the camera about something "terribly peculiar" going on, after her mother, Janet (Susan Mullen), and father, Parker (Mark Withers), give them gifts outside of what Bridget considers normal holidays, like birthdays or Christmas. When she opens her gift--a plush penguin--her reaction is to simply utter, "why?", which is arguably the most unnatural reaction for a kid to have at getting a gift; she immediately gives her gift the equally strange name of "Sweet William". For a seven year-old girl, Bridget is unusually suspicious and even cynical; she assumes that her parents are attempting to bribe her or butter her up for some future crisis--and it turns out she's right. Her Aunt Ruth (Kelly Britt) starts coming around and tries to convince her parents to send Grams off to an old folks home. Grams seems eerily enthusiastic about the idea, or at least puts on a convincing show that it doesn't bother her to be kicked out of her own home by her own kids. Bridget is the only person who shows her sorrow at living apart from her grandma, who is the only other person in the upper-class Severson household not disdainful of physical contact, and enjoys hugging as much as Bridget. Bridget's brother, Andrew (Carl Steven), is more interested in playing on his computer or collecting the baseball caps of his favorite teams; he is altogether a little snot. Bridget appears to be a normal girl living in an affluent house, having tea time with her stuffed animals. But Bridget hears voices from her bedroom mirror, which turns out to be Huggins, who emerges from the looking glass reminiscent of Samara from The Ring. (Bridget's initial reaction to let out a half-paralyzed cry for help is the only normal thing she does.) Surprisingly, the creature from the mirror does not grab a knife and start stabbing anyone, but instead explains that she comes from a magical land where hugging is magic--in fact, it gives off a psychedelic display of color and is followed by a musical melody that sounds a little ominous. Huggins is compulsively convinced that hugging solves all problems, and encourages Bridget to use it to save her Grandmother. Bridget's latent cynicism has her convinced there must be some actual magic within HuggaLand, and the two journey into the overly plush and pastel fantasy zone to procure some magical "youngberries". But in order for Bridget and Huggins--and their tag-a-long companion, Hugsy (Tony Urbano)--to claim these arbitrary MacGuffins of eternal youth, they have to descend into a cruel and unfriendly underworld called the "Land of Shrugs", ruled by a second-rate knock-off of the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs named Queen Admira (Aarika Wells). Queen Admira--who has a fondness for threatening people with being "digested"--selfishly hoards the fruit of the youngberry tree with the paranoid fervor of an addict. (Maybe giving them to Bridget's grandmother wouldn't be in her best interests anyway.)
The Hugga Bunch was a movie I was exposed to as a young child, and its lasting impression was that I wondered if the entire experience was nothing more than a fevered dream--it was too weird to be anything else. And yet The Hugga Bunch is a real--albeit still bizarre--movie that always feels like its walking on the fringes of plausibility, even before the talking dolls show up. The dialogue in the Severson household is always a bit off, as if it were read cold from an untested script. After Bridget shares her discovery with Andrew that Grams is being sent away, he uses the phrase that she is being "put out to pasture", explaining it to Bridget and confirming her suspicions that something is amiss. Yet this particular turn of phrase isn't really the kind of thing a slightly older brother would say, nor is his comeback at her consternation that she should "send a letter to her congressman". (Bridget wins the war of most insane retorts when she accuses Andrew of "sitting there shoving space nuggets in his face like nothing's happening".) A moment of poignancy between Bridget and Grams--as she pours through her old "memories" and photographs in the attic while Bridget bemoans her pending departure--is diminished by the sheer fantasy of Huggins defying the laws of physics and nature, crossing into our dimension by way of Bridget's mirror. When Huggins comes out of the mirror, the chroma keying effect is a little off; and the semi-synthetic quality to her voice makes her emergence disarming at the least. As if the fifty minute running time of The Hugga Bunch needed to be padded, the two goof around in Bridget's house, instead of addressing Bridget's quandary immediately. Huggins even gets chucked in the washing machine by accident, which she says leaves her "insides all squishy"--a choice of words that never sounds right. Huggins eventually leads Bridget into HuggaLand, and the creepy puppet's native dimension is a colorful and plushy realm that all but steals its design from The Wizard of Oz. (And of course, like every little cuddly, goblin-like creature in a fantasy setting, the dolls add the word "hug" to virtually everything around them.) Huggins leads Bridget to a talking bookworm that tells them where they can find the youngberries she desires; Bridget's reaction is, "A talking worm? Give me a break"...because a talking doll that came out of your bedroom mirror is far more plausible. Crossing over into the Land of Shrugs ups the ante on psychedelic imagery, with a (never seen) Sea of Broken Glass, a sideways sidewalk, and even a flame-spewing mammoth who turns into a cuddly elephant named Hodge Podge, who joins their quest in recompense for saving him. Along with the grumpy Shrugs in Queen Admira's castle that do her bidding, the last act of The Hugga Bunch feels like a rip off of Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal. (It also has shades of Labyrinth, although this film wouldn't be released until a year later in 1986.) Arguably the most blatant effort by The Hugga Bunch to promote its product comes when Bridget and her diminutive companions are traveling along a bridge littered with dolls who break out into song and dance--an set piece of questionable merit, given how poorly articulated they are. As everyone hugs, an overabundance of fireworks goes off around them, shattering the fantasy--such as it is--that The Hugga Bunch is anything other than a blatant plug for a line of toys.
Recommended for: Fans of movies that are disarmingly strange and become comical by virtue of their unnatural presentation. The Hugga Bunch may be "appropriate" for young children--they'll probably be ignorant that it is fundamentally a commercial for a defunct toy at this point--but it becomes hilarious when viewed with the experience of age and an understanding of how absurd it really is.
The Hugga Bunch was a movie I was exposed to as a young child, and its lasting impression was that I wondered if the entire experience was nothing more than a fevered dream--it was too weird to be anything else. And yet The Hugga Bunch is a real--albeit still bizarre--movie that always feels like its walking on the fringes of plausibility, even before the talking dolls show up. The dialogue in the Severson household is always a bit off, as if it were read cold from an untested script. After Bridget shares her discovery with Andrew that Grams is being sent away, he uses the phrase that she is being "put out to pasture", explaining it to Bridget and confirming her suspicions that something is amiss. Yet this particular turn of phrase isn't really the kind of thing a slightly older brother would say, nor is his comeback at her consternation that she should "send a letter to her congressman". (Bridget wins the war of most insane retorts when she accuses Andrew of "sitting there shoving space nuggets in his face like nothing's happening".) A moment of poignancy between Bridget and Grams--as she pours through her old "memories" and photographs in the attic while Bridget bemoans her pending departure--is diminished by the sheer fantasy of Huggins defying the laws of physics and nature, crossing into our dimension by way of Bridget's mirror. When Huggins comes out of the mirror, the chroma keying effect is a little off; and the semi-synthetic quality to her voice makes her emergence disarming at the least. As if the fifty minute running time of The Hugga Bunch needed to be padded, the two goof around in Bridget's house, instead of addressing Bridget's quandary immediately. Huggins even gets chucked in the washing machine by accident, which she says leaves her "insides all squishy"--a choice of words that never sounds right. Huggins eventually leads Bridget into HuggaLand, and the creepy puppet's native dimension is a colorful and plushy realm that all but steals its design from The Wizard of Oz. (And of course, like every little cuddly, goblin-like creature in a fantasy setting, the dolls add the word "hug" to virtually everything around them.) Huggins leads Bridget to a talking bookworm that tells them where they can find the youngberries she desires; Bridget's reaction is, "A talking worm? Give me a break"...because a talking doll that came out of your bedroom mirror is far more plausible. Crossing over into the Land of Shrugs ups the ante on psychedelic imagery, with a (never seen) Sea of Broken Glass, a sideways sidewalk, and even a flame-spewing mammoth who turns into a cuddly elephant named Hodge Podge, who joins their quest in recompense for saving him. Along with the grumpy Shrugs in Queen Admira's castle that do her bidding, the last act of The Hugga Bunch feels like a rip off of Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal. (It also has shades of Labyrinth, although this film wouldn't be released until a year later in 1986.) Arguably the most blatant effort by The Hugga Bunch to promote its product comes when Bridget and her diminutive companions are traveling along a bridge littered with dolls who break out into song and dance--an set piece of questionable merit, given how poorly articulated they are. As everyone hugs, an overabundance of fireworks goes off around them, shattering the fantasy--such as it is--that The Hugga Bunch is anything other than a blatant plug for a line of toys.
Recommended for: Fans of movies that are disarmingly strange and become comical by virtue of their unnatural presentation. The Hugga Bunch may be "appropriate" for young children--they'll probably be ignorant that it is fundamentally a commercial for a defunct toy at this point--but it becomes hilarious when viewed with the experience of age and an understanding of how absurd it really is.