For her first feature, Kirsten Tan enters the mainstream with this saga of Thana, a disentranced, unhappily married man who, convinced that the elephant he spotted while wandering the streets of Bangkok is the same one from his childhood, purchases the pachyderm and proceeds to walk it some 300 miles across Thailand to their hometown. Digitally slap a clown suit on Thana (Thaneth Warakulnukroh), and you’ll swear the guy escorting the mammoth is Bill Murray from the unjustly forgotten Larger than Life. The press notes call it “a crowd-pleaser at the Sundance Film Festival,” but don’t expect this Pop Aye to be “strong to the finnich.” The needlessly chaotic flashback structure foils any chance of that. Ditto the staging, as cute and potentially flattening as Tan’s tusked star. Those in the market for cute, however, will leave satisfied. (2016) — Scott Marks
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