This film was an amazing event when it was released in New Zealand. Footrot Flats has for several decades been New Zealand's most popular and best loved journal cartoon strip. Murray Ball's characters are household names to millions of Kiwis around the world, and this film gave them living character, voices, movement. The film was celebrated immensely and rightly so as, made as it was with that unique NZ quality that comes with our movies, it had cartoons speaking with Kiwi accents that weren't forced or too Australian, NZ scenary, NZ themes that captured the rural environment of the day - everything about it was, and to many people no doubt still is, very familiar. The film has Dog - the real-life inspiration for whom died a few years back which received national media attention - saving Jess, his bitch, and starting a family, trying to keep Wall and his girlfriend Cheeky apart, and discovering the meaning of being alive, as well as the human menaces of his life living their simple existences. A must for all patriots of Aotearoa, anyone who's lived on or spent time on a farm out the back of some place here or there, or anyone who loves good quality animation.