April 3rd, 2021 
Michael Lyons 
When Hop opened in 2011, film critic Nick Schager in The Village Voice said that the film was “…just demented enough to deliver a fleeting sugar rush.”
A perfect summation of Hop, the comedy from Illumination Entertainment, (the animation studio behind such films as the Despicable Me franchise), which looked to put a hip spin on The Easter Bunny through a story that seems like the springtime version of Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause. While it may not bear the impressive stamina of that or several other holiday films, Hop has slowly begun to develop its following in the decade since its release. The growing popularity could be, partly, because there isn’t a vast library of Easter movies from which to choose.
Hop combines live-action and animation as it tells the tale of E.B., a young rabbit set to take the reins of the family business and become the next Easter Bunny. Wanting more from his life and harboring a passion for becoming a drummer, E.B. leaves Easter Island (home of the Easter Bunny and his factory) and sets off for Hollywood (bringing the animated world into ours).
Here, E.B. meets fellow, out of work “slacker,” Fred O’Hare. The two strike up an unusual friendship and agreement of sorts. Fred helps E.B. realize his dream as a drummer by auditioning on the TV show “Hoff Knows Talent” (hosted by David Hasselhoff), and E.B. allows Fred to finally find a job, filling in for him as the Easter Bunny.
Hop came out of an idea that Chris Meledandri, founder and CEO of Illumination Entertainment, had to build a story around Easter icons and traditions.
Russell Brand, the comedian of the moment, was cast as E.B., bringing his dry, sarcastic wit, which was perfect for the Easter Bunny-to-be. Partnering with the character, actor James Marsden plays Fred O’Hare. The actor brings a genuine, likable performance to the proceedings and does solid work acting alongside the computer-generated bunny and all of the other CGI characters.
From a technical perspective, director Tim Hill does marvelous work blending the live-action and animation throughout Hop. Never once in the film do the special effect “seams” show. Particularly impressive is the sequence in which Fred attempts to set E.B. ‘free” into the wild (the now infamous “pooping jellybeans” moment). The animated E.B. honestly seems to be existing in the same space as Fred and the live-action surroundings.
There are many scenes like this – E.B. playing drums with the group “The Blind Boys of Alabama” and moment the “Pink Berets,” (the stealth, female bunny team dispatched to bring back E.B.) infiltrate a house – which are (and this is quite the statement) some of the film’s best examples of combining live-action and animation since 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
This is no surprise when one learns that the senior animation supervisor for the film was the talented Chris Bailey, who had already done significant work directing projects like the 1995 Mickey Mouse short, Runaway Brain short at Disney, as well as an animation supervisor for 2004’s Garfield: The Movie.
There is also tremendous visual imagination employed in Hop in bringing the Easter Bunny’s factory to life. Giant machines, in which jellybeans cascade out like multicolored waterfalls, alongside assembly lines of chocolate rabbits and marshmallow chicks have a wondrous, Willy-Wonka air to it
And at the factory, Hugh Laurie provides excellent work, as the very proper Easter Bunny. The multi-voiced Hank Azaria is hysterical, doing double duty as the voice of Carlos and Phil, two chicks focused on a coup d’état to take over the factory and Easter.
When it was released on April 1, 2011, Hop came with a slew of merchandise and other product promotions (in fact, no less than 92 different companies were involved in the film’s marketing.
Generating $37.5 million in its opening weekend, Hop…hopped…into the number one spot at the box office for two weeks and was a hit for Universal. Since its debut, it’s become a seasonal favorite on Blu-ray and with annual showings on the Freeform network.
Reviews of the film then and since have been mixed, but Hop is like indulging in a chocolate bunny for Easter breakfast: you may hate yourself afterward, but it satisfies your need.
This year as Hop commemorates ten years, watching it this Easter weekend may just provide, as film critic Schager said, that perfect movie “sugar rush.”
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