Delayed Reaction: Hop

The Pitch: Christmas gets all the love. Where's Easter's movie?

How I Came Into It: My mom always told me that Easter is more important than Christmas. That never sounded right, although I was a young atheist in hiding, so I didn't care about the religious importance of either. As non-religious entities, Christmas dwarfs Easter, so an Easter movie is, well, non-essential.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) I really like James Marsden. He's one of those actors who finds something good in even the worst of roles. I also don't mind Russell Brand as much as a lot of people I run into. Even though one half is animated, those two make a fun duo. This employs so many of the things that make Elf good, only for Easter. I get a weird thrill out of movies like this, that work so hard to prove that the thing (The Easter Bunny) is real while making the central joke of it all that we know it's not real. It's perfectly calibrated patronizing.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: No one cares about the Easter bunny. There's some legitimate misdirection involved with the Santa thing. The only reason why kids can't see parents hiding the eggs is so they don't know where they are. I guess it's the nature of family movies to leave no fable unadapted though. Hank Azaria's bird character just annoyed me too much. I don't know if it was the accent or that it brought attention to the fact that the Easter factory was using the chicks, essentially as slave labor, but every time it went back to him, I really didn't want to watch the movie.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend