Blending state of the art animation with live action, Hop is a comedy about E.B. (voiced by Russell Brand), the teenage son of the Easter Bunny. On the eve of taking over the family business, E.B. leaves for Hollywood in pursuit of his dream of becoming a drummer. He encounters Fred (James Marsden), an out-of-work slacker with his own lofty goals, who accidentally hits E.B. with his car. Feigning injury, E.B. manipulates Fred into providing him shelter, and Fred finds himself with the world’s worst houseguest.
I was told by a mother at this screening as I was walking out that “HOP is by far the best kid’s film since Tangled” and she might just be right! As far as Live Action animation films go, personally this one if up there with the better ones but unfortunately what starts off extremely strong just falls over.
HOP is brought to you by the team behind ‘Despicable Me’ that came out last year and I was quite excited walking in as I thought ‘Despicable Me’ was one of the best animated films last year bar obviously ‘Toy Story 3’, so anticipation of HOP you could say was a little high straight away the animation was impressive and when it crossed the live action boundary I didn’t really notice, I think one of the best things about HOP was the fact they didn’t go out to appeal to the adult market at all, this film is made for kids there’s no real adult humour, not like some of the animated films in previous years.
The cast itself was right up there for me Ive always been a fan of Russell Brand every since he hit our screens in ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ but this time Brand is the voice of E.B one of the cutest rabbit’s you will ever see, It did really feel like to me that the guys at Universal Pictures gave him the script and he thought “I could make this better” and re-wrote his lines and basically made it his own, as the dialog that came out of E.B did sound more like what Russell Brand would say other then a cute bunny. James Marsden (Enchanted, Sex Drive) who I think can play any role, worked well with the character of Fred O’Hare, the laziest man alive. Kaley Cuoco (TV’s Big Bang Theory) plays Sam O’Hare, Fred’s sister who ill be straight up I’ve had a mad crush on for years, so to me she’s fantastic in anything she’s in, I would have liked a bit bigger role though, I honestly thought in the trailers she was the ‘girlfriend’ not the sister. Hank Azaria (Love and Other Drugs, Year One) voices Carlos the little chicken that wants to take over the Easter Bunny empire, he does amazingly well as always as pretty much he’s the man of many voices including many voices in the Simpsons. By far the stand out though was Gary Cole(Talladega Nights, Pineapple Express) who plays the father of Marsden’s character some of the one lines this guy delivered was absolutely hilarious!
What disappointed me was though for a kids film it had a great premise.. But unfortunately for me it sort of felt like they were trying to be to much like Christmas Movie that’s out at Easter. As I said earlier I loved the first half of the film, it was cute, fun, hilarious! but after that and a couple of musical numbers I just started to get over it a bit and sitting in the cinema and starting to see little kids starting to walk around it sort of made me feel that the film can’t even hold a child’s attention.
I will say that HOP is one of the better kid’s films that has been out in the last few months and it will still be a great day out at the cinema for any family but for a lover of animation and kids films I walked out slightly disenchanted.
HOP is in cinemas on the 7th April I give this film 2.5 out of 5 stars.