Faith Group

Inspector Sun

Inspector Sun boards a seemingly normal plane for a much-needed vacation, but when an enigmatic millionaire receives a threat on his life, Sun is back on the case. Trapped in a web of lies, Sun must find the culprit before it's too late.

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When it comes to family entertainment, there are more options out there than anyone knows what to do with. Series, films, short form, episodic, really anything you might want to either distract a child or use as a means for a group activity. Back in May 2023, Viva Kids released Rally Road Racers, a colorful and fun racing film that also worked as an exploration of self-confidence and friendship. Now, perhaps you’re looking for something a little more October-centric, but still safer than the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” portion of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) (which will forever be seared into my adolescent memory). Viva Kids offers the Julio Soto Gúrpide-directed, Rocco Pucillo-written Inspector Sun starring Ronny Chieng (Joy Ride) as the voice of Inspector Sun, a mystery solving huntsman spider. While it may not be on the same level as animated mystery classic The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Inspector Sun may at least solve the case of the wild children, offering a grossly entomologically correct distraction. Synopsis: Inspired by Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries, Inspector Sun unfolds on a seaplane journey from Shanghai to San Francisco in the 1930s. There, ruined millionaires, black widow spiders, hired killers, and smugglers come together for a noir story in which insects of various species, with spiders at the helm, have created their own unique universe. Inspector Sun is a co-production between The Thinklab Media and Gordon Box in association with 3 Doubles. It also received funding in the form of an Epic Megagrant. Viva Kids recently picked up a minority share in the Canary Island-based animation studio 3 Doubles Producciones, which could become a majority share after two years. Other 3 Doubles credits include the popular web series Arpo the Robot, and its staff have separately worked on films such as Deep, Netflix’s Animal Crackers, and one of Spain’s biggest animated IPs, Tad the Lost Explorer. Where the film falters is largely in the character of Sun himself. His arc is battling his reputation as “lucky” versus actually being intelligent and coming to terms with which one he is. The issue is that the character is conceited enough to believe he’s actually clever and too few around him tell him the truth. This results in far too many sequences where the joke is that Sun is a beat behind someone as they lay out a factoid of some kind with him either trying to take the credit or saying it was his idea. The character appears to either be in *deep* denial or lacks the awareness to recognize how frequently he does this and, with several characters being female-coded, it also has him come off as entirely misogynistic. We’re meant to root for Sun, yet he’s the kind of high-confidence buffoon that I rarely engage with primarily because he lacks the charm or charisma to make these antics forgivable