This one sneaks up on you. You sit down for a cartoon pig and leave gutted by a story about a kid inventing a father. McDull spins his absent dad into Prince de la Bun, a storybook royal with a bun for a name, and the film keeps cutting between that fantasy and the flat, unglamorous reality of a Hong Kong childhood where Mrs. Mak does the math on what she can afford. The watercolor backdrops of tenement blocks and hillside stairs do more emotional work than most dramas manage with dialogue, and the deadpan Cantonese narration refuses to underline a single feeling. If you came from My Life as McDull expecting more gentle gags, this is the one that hurts. It knows exactly what a child does with a story when the truth is not available to him.

McDull is a 2004 animated comedy film from Hong Kong, directed by Yuen Toe. It tells the story of the life of McDull, a fictional pig, and continues from the earlier film My Life as McDull, released in 2001. The next chapter in the franchise, McDull, the Alumni, arrived in 2006.