I thought it was a great idea, I mean, all those fun Christmas movies out there, why not start producing fun movies that could help us rejoice in Easter and wove itself into our culture as fun, annual Easter traditions? Christmas has "It's A Wonderful Life", "Christmas Vacation", "Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas", "White Christmas, "Miracle on 34th Street", "The Santa Clause", "Elf", and the list goes on. All top shelf Christmas movies that found their way into millions of families' homes as part of the Christmas festivities to help us get into that Christmas cheer. Then, there's plenty of second tier, still entertaining, miss it one year, watch it the next, Christmas movies like "Christmas With the Kranks", "How The Grinch Stole Christmas", and "Jingle All the Way".
When will Hollywood start to exploit Easter in pursuit of profit for our own benefit of entertainment? "Hop" attempts to start this trend in the under-served Easter holiday, realizing that Christmas is already pretty crowded.
"Hop", as an Easter movie, would be a second-tier Easter movie if there were more children Easter-themed movies. Still entertaining, but not a "must see" classic, it's still fun, albeit about 15 minutes too long. Another kind of sad fact lurks near the end when the Easter Bunny says goodbye and climbs into a vehicle that reminds you more of Santa's sleigh, and a farewell closely mocking that of Santa's "to all a goodnight" farewell, as if Hollywood screenplay writers couldn't spend the time figuring out something clever and original for the Easter Bunny to say, tearing pages out of Clement C. Moore's classic from over 150 years ago. A rather sad fact, considering that it took years for Clement C. Moore to even admit that he had written "The Night Before Christmas."
Being a kids movie, you'd expect a few Easter-themed songs, or music, but there was no attempt at Disney-style embellishments. Still, the movie and story line is entertaining enough. The 3D animation, mostly composited over live scenes, is excellent. The 3D characters, bunnies and chickadees are pretty adorable and colorful. The acting fits the audience -- a little over the top. James Marsden plays the part of a late twenty-something who'd rather live at home and play video games instead of working. He embraces the part playfully self-deprecating in his immature state. There's even an interesting side commentary of the state of the U.S. economy, as he lost his job a year ago because of the recession -- and the company he was working for was "downsizing". Marsden channels his inner Jim Carrey with his own style of exaggerated facial expressions, physical humor, puns, and playful gags. Obviously acting often in scenes by himself, you can sometimes tell his eyes aren't exactly meeting the imaginary 3D characters he is supposed to be interacting with. I'm sure it's hard to do that kind of acting, besides, James had to go and shoot "Enchanted 2", so he probably didn't have a lot of time.
The live action and real actors probably get twice the screen time as the more interesting and entertaining 3D characters, which is this film's biggest fault, considering that the audience is 4 - 12 year olds. I take that back, it has a bigger fault -- the movie's main antagonist, one of the Senior Easter Bunny's helpers, a plump yellow chick named Carlos, not only wants to supplant the Easter Bunny and take his place, perhaps banish him or something, actually wants to boil him, and James Marsden alive. A bit too brutal and uncreative, you can have a villain in a children's movie, but a ruthless killer?!
The audience deserved a bit more sympathetic, less evil, and violent plot devices. After all, Carlos was the Easter Bunny's faithful servant for many years, and suddenly he wants to kill him? In the end, the movie felt a bit long, and simplistic extremes like Carlos going for the Easter Bunny's jugular seemed like the screenplay writers were just taking the easy way out and phoning in a good 30 minutes of plot, pulling pages out of other movies, seemingly from "Braveheart" or "Casino" so they could get paid and move on to their next project.
In the end, though, I think most kids will enjoy the lovable creatures, the gags, semi-low-brow humor, but I wouldn't recommend it for any kids under 8. And I really wish for a holiday children's movie, they wouldn't have stooped to simplistic violence to keep the movie going. Even the Grinch didn't want to kill anyone, and he was the Grinch, for crying out loud. If only James Marsden and the other co-stars would have said, "this movie has lots of potential, but it's Easter and it's for kids, could we soften some of the 'kill the Easter Bunny' rhetoric and make the antagonist a little less evil and more like the Grinch?"
No comments:
Post a Comment