Any children’s cartoon built around an armed loner/bounty hunter named “Hitpig!” was always going to be a dubious undertaking.

But it was created by longtime “Bloom County” cartoonist Berkely Breathed. So it’s worth pondering. His cracked, kid-friendly (allegedly) vision comes to the screen as a sometimes unsettling comedy about hunting down a show elephant released by an animal rights activist.

It’s got a touch of animal abuse, an “animals are meant to be free” message and a few big names providing voices in the cast, but little in the script that either amuses or makes for a compelling, holds-your-interest story.

Jason Sudeikis voices the title character, a grizzled veteran of missing pets bounty-hunting summoned by a sadistic “sixth generation” Vegas “animal act” impressario to find his missing elephant.

The rotund Leaping Lord of the Leotard (Rainn Wilson) flexes his ego and mistreats his animals, reassuring his star attraction — the Indian elephant Pickles (Lilly Singh) — that “I lock you up because I love you.”

Portugeuse singer-actress Anitta voices Letitia de Anjos (Portugeuse for “Angel”), the activist who has been Hitpig’s nemesis, the one person willing to free Pickles, but someone not big on follow-through AFTER the “rescue.”

Leaping Lord needs the elephant to catch his “gravity” resenting butt in the “leaping” part of his act. And he’s willing to pay big bucks to recover the pachyderm.

Pickles figures the pig who shows up with all sorts of gadgets including net guns and a souped-up sometimes-airborne VW Microbus is there to “find her family” and take her to it — in India.

But that’s not in the pig’s contract. It’ll take a road trip, encounters with a radioactive polecat (RuPaul), a renegage koala (Shelby Young) and a Super Rooster big screen superhero (Charlie Adler) to make our “just a job” pig see the error of his ways

The Leaping Lord makes a colorful, hissable villain, and Wilson has fun with the voice.

The jokes are often just creative expletives — “What the elllllllllePHANT?” “Son of a BEECHnut!”

The funniest scene might be a blow-gun tranquilizer dart shoot out between our activist and the bounty hunter. Too much screen time is spent on filler, travel montages set to classic rock/pop tunes of the distant past.

Sudeikis sounds disappointed in what he’s agreed to in the recording sessions for Hitpig, barely tolerant, much less enthusiastic for lines like “I think I just cracked a baby back rib!”

The shambolic plot throws in new characters, brings back nearly-forgotten ones, and resolves itself by putting our pig — and everybody else — in space.

But the whole enterprise leaves a sour taste in one’s mouth, thin entertainment that you figure you need to take seriously because of Breathed’s involvement.

Rating: PG, animal abuse

Cast: The voices of Jason Sudeikis, Lilly Singh, Rainn Wilson, RuPaul, Anitta, Flavor Flav and Andy Serkis

Credits: Directed by Cinzia Angelini and David Feiss, scripted by Berkeley Breathed, David Rosenbaum and Tyler Werrin, based on a book by Berkeley Breathed. A Viva Pictures release.

Running time: 1:26