Hop (2011)

Talking Rabbits Freaks Her Out

I confess that the only inspiration behind wanting to watch today’s movie was to shit on it.  I feel like it’s been a while since I really got to ridicule a movie for how bad it was since it seems people have actually been requesting movies that they genuinely want my opinion on, as opposed to movies they just want to punish me with.  But I need to watch a piece of shit every now and then.  It builds up my immune system.  And it’s a lot funnier when I hate the movie and can give you numerous reasons why.  When I saw today’s movie was available in a RedBox, I reserved the shit right out of it.  So let’s get into a movie that you all may have seen commercials for, but were all probably well aware of the fact that you didn’t want to see it.  This movie is Hop, written by Ken Daurio, Brian Lynch, and Cinco Paul, directed by Tim Hill, and starring James Marsden, the voice and physical form of Russell Brand, Kaley Cuoco, the voice of Hugh Laurie, the voice of Hank Azaria, Gary Cole, Elizabeth Perkins, David Hasselhoff, and Chelsea Handler.

On Easter Island (ha ha, fuck you movie), all of the world’s Easter needs are handled underground, run by Mr. Bunny (Hugh Laurie), the current presiding Easter Bunny.  He hopes that his son, E.B. (Russell Brand), will take over for him one day, but EB just wants to play drums and open a vaguely successful string of video game stores that he will later sell to GameStop.  EB runs away to Hollywood in hopes of finding success as a drummer (The White Stripes could use a new one).  His father sends his royal guard, the Pink Berets, after him.  Fred O’Hare (James Marsden) (also, could you lay it off with the puns already?) has just been kicked out of his house by his dad, Henry (Gary Cole), and told to find a job.  His sister, Sam (Kaley Cuoco), lets him stay at a mansion that she’s housesitting.  On the way there, Fred hits EB with his car.  EB’s dead, the end.  Okay, it didn’t go that way.  Instead, EB feigns injury in order to get Fred to take him in.  Through the course of the movie, Fred and EB must find their true calling in life.

I definitely found a few things to make fun of in this movie, but the weirdest thing that happened here is that I did not hate this movie.  I’m a surprised as you are!  This movie is actually pretty cute and I’m sure kids would really like it.  There are even a few jokes in the movie that made me laugh and I did not see that coming at all.  The story of the movie is nothing new and reminded me a little bit of the Prince and the Pauper by the end.  It’s a couple of stories about people that want to do something, or don’t know what they want to do at all, and the people around them just don’t get them, man.  This story is so familiar that I tend to refer to it as “My Life”.  Later on is the Prince and the Pauper part, where Fred decides that he would like to be the Easter Bunny so that EB can go about his dream.  This is around where the story really loses me.  How the hell is a human going to be an Easter Bunny, let alone the Anything Bunny?  It’d make a lot more sense if the chickens that helped out actually took over after their coup d’état.  Chickens make more sense for a holiday that centers around eggs anyway.  And if it was going to be a human, why not a woman instead?  They actually have eggs.  That’d be a pretty icky Easter though, and it’d have to happen every 28 days.  These, of course, were not the only things that didn’t make sense to me in this movie.  First off, why the hell would Sam let her slacker, loser brother housesit a giant and expensive mansion owned by her boss?  The movie actually made the biggest surprise they could have by not actually making him burn the house to the ground by the end of the movie.  He actually left a fairly small footprint on the mansion.  Fred also makes a really big deal about trying to hide the fact that EB is a talking rabbit, but the greater majority of the people in the world inexplicably don’t even bat an eye at it.  Except when it serves the story, that is.  Like when EB makes a scene at Fred’s sister’s Easter play, when people are suddenly interested because they wanted to waste about 10 minutes with a whole ventriloquism bit they wrote.  Also, though you kind of expect their specific talents to play into the resolution of the movie, I felt like it didn’t make that much sense that EB was able to save Easter by playing the drums.  The puns in this movie got on my nerves because it felt like they weren’t even trying.  The upcoming Easter Bunny’s name is EB, the other guy’s name is O’Hare, they work from Easter Island, etc.  They were either not trying or they actually thought this shit was hilarious.  Many other jokes didn’t work in this movie, and some of the stuff just seemed crass, like the random fact that EB shit out Jellybeans.  It’s gross, unnecessary, and the reasoning they tried to make behind it was stupid.  EB showed Fred to prove that he was a special bunny.  Apparently him talking wasn’t getting that job done.  And there’s also one big spoiler that made me have a problem with the entire movie ::SPOILER ALERT:: The Easter Bunny isn’t real.  ::END SPOILER::

The performances in this movie were exactly what they were.  First off, all of the bunnies (and mostly EB) were so ridiculously cute in their animation.  Women will swoon.  I may have swooned myself, but I’m not entirely sure what swooning is.  Is that when you pass out and wake up with no pants on and covered in blood that’s not your own?  EB himself had occasional moments of funniness, but almost as many occasions of annoyance.  I think that’s due to Russell Brand lending his voice to the character.  I’ve always felt like Russell Brand’s idea of comedy was to constantly have things coming out of your mouth and then, even if only 10% are funny or worth hearing, at least people will still leave thinking he was hilarious.  What didn’t annoy me about EB was that he was a fantastic drummer.  Sure, there was no good reason for him to drum in the movie, but he was animated to be good at it.  James Marsden was mostly manic and over the top on his side, with a little bit of stupid mixed in, but he never really bothered me.  Gary Cole was mostly an asshole through the movie.

This movie doesn’t have a lot to offer you unless you have kids, but I think you’ll actually find it mostly cute if you end up watching it with them.  The story is silly, nonsensical, and somewhat dumb, but it’s also really cute and has a couple of funny moments in it.  If you like Russell Brand, that would be a plus for you with this movie.  If you’re like me, he’ll be very hit and miss but bother you much less since you barely have to see his face.  I’ll recommend this movie for kids, but say skip it for the single people.  Hop gets “I am a bunny and am incredibly sexy” out of “This must be the rags part of my rags-to-riches story.”

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Puss in Boots (2011)

Is It True That a Cat Always Lands on It’s Feet?

I take no shame in the fact that I have never cared for the Shrek series.  They never worked for me, and I could not be swayed by the accolades showered upon it by the majority of the people I’ve spoken to about the series.  Regardless of my aversion, they still managed to crank out four of the things, all of which dropped in quality exponentially with each release.  The second Shrek movie introduced a new character based on an older fairy tale, and one that gained popularity due to the character’s cuteness.  When they finally felt that they had drained the life out of the Shrek series, Dreamworks found a way to get a few more drops out of the series by taking that character and giving him a spinoff.  Let’s see how that went in my review for Puss in Boots, written by Tom Wheeler, Brian Lynch, and Will Davies, directed by Chris Miller, and starring the voices of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Sedaris, Billy Bob Thornton, Constance Marie, and Guillermo del Toro.

Before the time when Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) met Shrek, he had a few adventures of his own.  The most notable is when he teamed up with Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and his old friend from their orphan childhood Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis).  Puss and Humpty had a spotty past.  As Puss was becoming the hero of their small town, Humpty was getting into trouble.  It escalated until Humpty tricked Puss into robbing a bank with him, leaving both to lives as outlaws, a title that followed Puss around, even though he left Humpty to his fate with the guards.  Seemingly reformed, Humpty manages to talk Puss into joining him and Kitty in their quest for the magic beans that will lead them to the Golden Goose, with the promise that the goose’s golden eggs will be used to pay back their small town for what they stole so many years ago.  Their first step is to acquire the magic beans from Jack (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jill (Amy Sedaris).

Anything to do with Shrek still fails to hit home with me.  This was a cute movie, and one that kids will probably love, but it doesn’t have very much to offer adults.  The story is fine enough.  There’s a whole story of redemption, adventure, and betrayal, and you probably won’t see parts of it coming.  The problem was that the comedy wasn’t really there, and the action was toned down and spread out.  Most of their comedy was vaguely slapsticky for the kids, but they rarely ventured into something for adults.  One attempt they made was a joke about “golden eggs” in the beginning, and indicating towards someone’s balls for it.  This was okay for adults, and probably over the heads of kids, but it was only vaguely funny.  The most comedy I found in the movie was based around Puss acting like a cat.  When he started chasing a light around, trying to catch it, it was both cute and amusing in the same way as it is when my cats do it.  And by that, I mean that I get bored after 30 seconds and kick them to make them stop acting retarded.  You can’t catch light!  I am so intellectually superior to you!  They had a couple action scenes, but ruined a couple of them with strange choices.  After a rooftop pursuit, Puss finally catches up with the masked cat that ruined his heist and, to settle the score, they start a dance battle.  He’s carrying a sword, y’know?  I won’t spoil it for you by saying who got served in this fight, but someone should’ve gotten skewered instead.  There were a few other hit-and-miss action scenes in the movie, but the good ones were too short and the others were just missed opportunities.  There’s also a lot of set up to a gigantic, scary creature called The Terror that ends up being pretty disappointing.  I understand that their choice to make the creature not as scary as they built it up to was their choice, but it was kind of a buzzkill.

The cast performed well, but were also fairly disappointing.  I don’t really understand the choice to take people like Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek and turn them into cats.  The bulk of the appeal for those two people is their looks, so taking that away makes me lose my interest.  They did a good enough job at it, but I’d rather just go watch Desperado.  That way, I can see Salma’s boobs.  The biggest disappoint for me was Zach Galifianakis.  Zach was one of my favorite comedians long before everyone else jumped on board when he did the Hangover (Hipster statement), but he seemed to not be allowed to be funny in this movie.  Most of his comedy is probably stuff that could not be included in a kid friendly movie, but his character in this movie either attempted comedy with a couple of really bad puns, or occasionally with some physical humor that really had nothing to do with him.  He performed the character well, but I wished they would’ve let the funniest person in this movie be funny a little.  Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris performed their parts well also, but weren’t in it very much.

I can’t say that I really expected that much going into this movie.  I knew it was a kid movie, and I knew that it would have similarities to the Shrek series that never interested me, but I give these things a chance.  The story was fine, but the comedy flopped, and the good performances felt wasted.  Your kids will probably like this – as they’ll probably like anything with moving shapes that fall down occasionally – but you might get bored by the halfway point.  You can skip this movie.  Puss in Boots gets “It ain’t over-easy!” out of “You have made the cat angry.”

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