Hop (2011)
Directed by Tim Hill
E.B., the Easter Bunny's teenage son, heads to Hollywood, determined to become a drummer in a rock 'n' roll band. In L.A., he's taken in by Fred after the out-of-work slacker hits E.B. with his car.
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18 films that influenced Hop
What critics say influenced Hop
Russell Brand's rise as a star has been fairly swift and unconventional, sure, but usually the broad children's film comes far later in the career-- Tim Allen made The Santa Clause when he already had a hit network TV show, and Eddie Murphy had given us nearly a dozen edgy comedies before moving on to voice Donkey in Shrek.
With a plot that combines pieces from just about every Christmas fantasy movie, most notably "The Santa Clause", director Tim Hill ("Alvin And The Chipmunks") doesn't reveal anything really new or different.
The plot is uneven and forced at times, giving a mix of “The Santa Clause” and the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” films.
While the world's desperate cries for more sequels to "The Santa Clause" go unanswered, Universal Pictures brings us the next best thing: the same basic concept, changed to the Easter Bunny, mixed with "Alvin and the Chipmunks," and executed without distinction.
Hop appears to have been conceived in the minds of studio executives contemplating The Santa Clause and its dismal ilk and concluding that if it worked for Christmas, it will work for Easter too.
Actually the live-action-animation hybrid owes more to The Santa Clause and Alvin and the Chipmunks (Hop director Tim Hill was also responsible for the singing-rodent flick).
The genre, which has produced such classics as 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit and 2009’s Avatar , reaches its lowest point in quite some time with Hop , however, as director Tim Hill has crafted a dull and aggressively mediocre comedy that seems to have been designed to appeal solely to small children.
As a combination of animation and live action, it can’t help but recall Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but where Roger managed to be almost enjoyably irritating, Brand’s EB is something you’d unrepentantly fling into the fast lane of the M6.
Deranged references to "Fatal Attraction," an exposé of where jelly beans really come from, and sight gags involving blues legends the Blind Boys of Alabama counteract a lot of treacle.
Hop also evokes other, better movies with its Wonka-like candy factory, Danny Elfman-esque score and odd nod to Fatal Attraction's bunny-boiling scene.
Instead of dreaming up enthused silly business, director Tim Hill (“Alvin and the Chipmunks”) gets bogged down in the details, laboring to find relevance with the cringe-worthy Hasselhoff business, while instructing Marsden to act as though his feet were on fire.
With a plot that combines pieces from just about every Christmas fantasy movie, most notably "The Santa Clause", director Tim Hill ("Alvin And The Chipmunks") doesn't reveal anything really new or different.
Actually the live-action-animation hybrid owes more to The Santa Clause and Alvin and the Chipmunks (Hop director Tim Hill was also responsible for the singing-rodent flick).
So I think if you liked "Alvin and the Chipmunks," you're a prime candidate to enjoy "Hop."
Director Tim Hill follows the formula of his last film, “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” and delivers another an anthropomorphic rodent musician and characters that eat his poop, literally—which seems a lot better than what he’s feeding us.
Or maybe that’s the direction of Tim Hill, whose resume is trainwreck of films like “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties.”
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Director Tim Hill (nephew of George Roy Hill, who helmed The Sting among other classics of the 1960's & 70's) progresses naturally from Alvin and the Chipmunks to rabbits.
Hey, isn’t this The Jazz Singer?
(The same most definitely cannot be said of the truly awful end credits "update" of the classic "Arthur's Theme (The Best That You Can Do)," however.) Brand can also be heard but not seen in the live-action/animated holiday family film Hop, which plays like the movie mating product of The Santa Clause and The Nightmare Before Christmas that somehow ended up with an Easter bent.
Grabbing then gagging motor-mouth English comic Russell Brand as the voice of the slacker bunny EB is just one of the many misfires made by director Tim Hill and producer Christopher Meledandri’s usually reliable production company, Illumination Entertainment (Ice Age, 2002; Robots, 2005; Despicable Me, 2010).
Though the endearingly rendered animated characters designed by Peter De Sève ( Finding Nemo , Ice Age ) show care, every other aspect of the film feels like an afterthought, a lazy collection of easy-even-for-a-kid-movie jokes loosely organized to tell the origin story of the “first human Easter Bunny,” a tale that never feels as if it needed to be told.
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As my mind wandered in the theater, I imagined Hasselhoff teaming up with Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze to make a funky sort of Easter version of “Being John Malkovich.”
And most of those Easter movies have some obvious and relevant religious overtones to them, such as “The Passion of the Christ,” “King of Kings” and even “Jesus Christ Superstar.”