Hop

In the roster of popular holiday mascots, the Easter Bunny can definitely be labelled as one of the most iconic. Originally constructed by German Lutherans as a figure meant to judge the moral character of children, The Easter Bunny and his trademark task of delivering eggs on the start of the Easter season became so widespread that he is now as intertwined with the holiday as Santa Clause is with Christmas. However, unlike Santa who has had movies galore centred around his mythos, few to any movies about the Easter Bunny seem to exist at all, even though he has plenty of untapped potential. The only feature that got mainstream attention was the 2011 animated/live action hybrid kids film created by Illumination, Hop, as despite getting pretty negative reviews, it earned its money back at the box office due to its strong marketing campaign. While it’s nice to see the character finally given a movie, it’d would’ve been nice if it was one of substance.

A young rabbit named E.B. (voiced by Russell Brand) is being prepped by his father, Henry (voiced by Hugh Laurie) to become the next Easter Bunny, but E.B.’s passion for drumming and lack of interest in taking on such a prestigious title causes him to run away to Hollywood in order to become a professional drummer. As this is occurring, a young man named Fred O’Hare (played by James Marsden) is told by his family that he finally needs to grow up and get a job, with his sister, Samantha (played by Kaley Cuoco) allowing him to stay at her boss’s mansion to house-sit while he prepares for an interview she secured for him at a gaming company. E.B. winds up at the mansion and even though Fred is initially hesitant and greatly against E.B. sticking around, he changes his tune when E.B. tells him that he’s the Easter Bunny, which gives Fred the idea of becoming the next Easter Bunny himself. While these two try to navigate their own life problems, The Easter Bunny has sent a trio of royal guard bunnies named the Pink Berets, to track down E.B., but while he’s distracted, his second-in-command, a worker chicken named Carlos (voiced by Hank Azaria) plans to overthrow the workshop and run Easter himself.

Hop is a phenomenally lazy, bland, easily forgettable picture that doesn’t take advantage of the creative, colorful and fresh aspects that can come with this character and his mythology. While it doesn’t try hard enough to be truly terrible, it’s so devoid of passion and effort that it can’t in good faith be called anything but a bad egg.

With this being only their second movie after Despicable Me, Illumination as a studio should be known more for their ability to make millions of dollars at the box office rather than for creating quality material, and while some of their later work would be perfectly serviceable as junk food content, they have usually produced pretty lacklustre movies that are more irritating than inviting. Even so early out the gate, you can feel a lot of the usual ingredients of a traditional Illumination film in this, like containing a solid cast of funny entertainers who are rarely given anything good to work with, a visual style that is vibrant and cartoonishly expressive but can often feel like a pretty distraction from the hollow scripting and characters, and premises that have the potential to be creative and fun, but are often bogged down and beaten to the point of lukewarm mediocrity. Hop is an incredibly frustrating example as the idea of having a human Easter Bunny is a silly but somewhat cute and clever idea that could lead to something fun, and the opening few minutes within the Easter factory are whimsical, visually pleasing and creative to witness, doing a good job at fooling you into thinking this movie might be about something special. However, the second they show their flannel-shirt wearing protagonist drumming to Good Charlotte, the lameness starts to encroach more and more, and once he enters the real world and interacts with James Marsden, any hopes of this being something original or different are shoved right back into the ground.

While the premise is sound, it feels like the story writers, Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio (who also wrote the script alongside Brian Lynch) never went further than that initial pitch, as it quickly devolves into every standard kids film of the era starring a talking animated character in the real world interacting with a down-on-his-luck human protagonist whose life is altered and improved by this outsider’s influence. This is very repetitive of other money-making IP-driven films of questionable quality released around this time period like Yogi Bear, The Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks (which was directed by Tim Hill, who also directs this movie, which explains a lot), but those at the very least can say they stand out for how terrible they are. This movie is technically more tolerable as the jokes are just unfunny rather than painful, the acting is fine and there is at least a section with some creative worth, but it is so dull and lifeless to get through because it feels like it’s trying so little that it becomes even more of a disappointment. The movie is pretty short which thankfully results in a quick exit but also means the little conflict the film addresses barely gets developed or properly resolved, the characters are very recyclable and don’t stand out at all, and the film spends so much time on the two leads trying to find regular jobs that it totally forgets about the Easter Bunny portion of the story (which could’ve been a lot more interesting), it’s purely just background noise for kids, not to be watched and registered.

This specific type of kid’s movie often featured people who were way above this kind of material, and audiences were forced to watch them just blindly shuffle through scenes without much care or even investment. Hop contains decently funny people like James Marsden, Kaley Cuoco, Hugh Laurie, Hank Azaria, Chelsea Handler, and even David Hasselhoff, but because the script is so uninterested and the characters are so stale, it just doesn’t work even when you can tell the actors are trying. The lead character of E.B. has some decently expressive animation and despite Russell Brand as a person being quite problematic, he does do a decent enough job voicing him, but his design is so generic and dated and his character is so poorly formed and constructed that he just feels like a marketing tool to appeal to kids rather than a lead in an Easter Bunny film. Hugh Laurie gets quickly forgotten about as the film gets going, Hank Azaria must have some obsession with voicing characters that are not of his own ethnicity because his portrayal of this Spanish labor chicken is on a tightrope walk between just being offensive or just being generic bad all around, (either way the character is so sparingly used, he doesn’t even feel like a proper villain), the Pink Berets are given very cute designs but also don’t have nearly enough screen time to be anything more than plot devices, and the rest of the film is spend stuck with these not very interesting human characters.

James Marsden is a talented performer, yet is constantly miscast in several poor projects, and while he is trying his best to work in this movie (to the point that it almost feels a little too passionate and slightly embarrassing), the script literally removes the one quality that could’ve given him something fun to do and instead just keeps him having conversations with a CG bunny in a car for most of the film, it’s frustratingly uncaring. Kaley Cuoco doesn’t do much, Gary Cole and Elizabeth Perkins maybe could’ve been fine with better roles, but otherwise feel so secondary, Chelsea Handler and even a brief Josh Gad cameo are part of a pointless scene that adds very little, even David Hasselhoff feels like a malfunctioning animatronic awkwardly shifting through all his scenes, it just feels like no one had any idea what to do.

It’s not surprising that this would be Illumination first and only venture into the world of live action as it feels like they’re better suited in the animated space, and it doesn’t feel like this story really benefits from having a more realistic setting. If anything, it actively hampers it as the movie spends most of its time away from the creative space of the Easter Bunny factory (located lamely on Easter Island of all places) and more in typical city scapes, office buildings, suburban homes and cars (so many car scenes, it’s ridiculous), which only sucks out the potential for this premise even more. The opening scene has a lot of vibrant colors, interesting contraptions that decorate and create candy in a fun manner, and enough of a visual identity that it would’ve helped bring more modern life into the ancient mythology of the holiday mascot, but because of how safe, normal and bland the rest of the movie looks by comparison, it feels like it was purposefully positioned in the intro to trick people into missing how lacking the rest of the film’s visuals are. The design of the characters has spouts of that Illumination style (mainly the chickens which is fitting because they feel very Minion-coded in how they’re used), the effects themselves aren’t amazing but work enough given the kind of movie they’re making, and the man behind the character designs, Peter de Sève, has worked on a lot of great projects like Prince of Egypt, Finding Nemo, and even Arthur Christmas, so it feels like he did the best he could with the little he was given (he also designed characters for Ice Age, so he’s used to designing for mediocre features). The soundtrack is packed full of lame dated music that only worsens this film’s rewatch-ability and credibility, and while the musical score composed by Christopher Lennertz is a bit more standard, the overly whimsical and in-your-face attitude can be a little insufferable (he also composed Alvin and the Chipmunks, which also featured an overly loud and obnoxiously whimsical score, so at least he’s consistent).

Hop should’ve been a charming, inventive look at a very popular Easter mascot, but was instead a washed-out, tired, unimaginative retread of an already lazy formula made solely for the purpose of making money. The Easter Bunny has shown up as a supporting character in other movies where he has been received favorably but considering that this is still to this day one of the only mainstream movies to feature him in a meaningful way, is something that will hopefully be rectified in the future so that this isn’t the only option. Hop isn’t a garbage film as being garbage would mean leaving an impression, as this film is so uninvested in existing for any creative purpose that it will quickly leave your memory once you’ve seen it outside of a couple memorable visuals and decent performances. Ironically not the worst Illumination film out there (their handling of Dr. Seuss will also be more embarrassing), these rabbit droppings were sadly not jelly beans on this occasion.