Hank and Mike (2008)

The story starts out rather cleverly on Easter morning. It contrasts roommates, Hank and Mike on how they spend the night of their biggest day in their career. Mike is fast asleep in bed while Hank smokes cigarettes, drinks beer and abuses himself to a scrambled porno movie. Clearly they are the "odd couple." As fate would have it, they miss the last house on their route (they do a lot of breaking and entering). Since the company has opted to downsize, they find themselves out of a job. Now Easter Bunnies in the workforce is a funny thing. They work for UPS, but hide the packages. They work for a school and serve the kids chocolate. Unfortunately their work failures due to being an Easter Bunny is in the form of a montage and not really exploited to its comic potential. After Hank pawns Mike's Golden Egg award, the movie becomes dark as each one must now deal with their failure resorting to drink and drugs. The bunny aspect no longer plays a role as they become any two losers and the movie becomes boring. It remains boring up until the very end when they devise a plan to get their jobs back. Nudity, language, simulated sex (mostly in the first half). Decent soundtrack.

I rented this movie without knowing anything about it and with no expectations. It turned out to be one of the funniest movies I have seen in a long time. Thomas Michael plays the role of a womanising, heavy drinker who is quite comfortable with his imperfections very well. His character is the deadpan needed for the running jokes throughout the movie. Mike, Paolo Mancini, lives for Easter and brilliantly plays the role of the straight laced guy, who's ready to snap at any moment. Hank and Mike complement each other perfectly, as the two Easter bunnies, with their individual glaring character flaws helping to highlight the underlying sense of reality throughout the film.A stand out performance is Chris Klein, who plays an excellent role as a cut-throat contractor hellbent on making a fast buck at anyones expense, and has one of the best scenes singing The Burning Hells karaoke demonstrating how his character may be more tragic than the two bunnies put together.The bunny suits are a brilliant visual aid and work extremely well to emphasise the darkest moments, of an already extremely dry comedy. The film would still work without the suits and Easter bunnies, but it would lack the satire along with the ability to draw you into a universe where being an Easter bunny is a job and that is how it is.The film is not a rip-roaring comedy adventure in the world of hilarious Easter bunnys, but rather a tragic reality, where you cant help but laugh at the flaws, interactions and one liners the well developed characters have to offer, something akin to Arrested Development or Office Space as opposed to American Pie or anything with Rob Schneider.If you take the time and allow yourself to be taken into their world without expectations of a blockbuster comedy, I hope you will be thankful and enjoy this gem that slipped under the radar.

if you're going to make a movie about real life easter bunnies in a real life setting, you have to make it deadpan and very realistic or surreal and edgy, this doesn't fit into either and as a result you don't know whether to laugh or empathise with the bunnies. I watched this half-cut so I may have missed some gags and I reckon I could like this more second time around but in any case, the writers/actors don't have the comedic presence to make this a hoot and the two "stars" mantegna and Klein are miscast, they should have swapped roles at least and Klein is very uncovincing as the evil, ruthless, corporate slime. There very some funny moments in this like when the bunnies tried to do other jobs but even then, the supporting,oddball characters did little to liven this up. The special features/making of this are about as bloated and long winded as you can get, its heartening to see how much effort and how many years of planning went into this lads but if this is the very best you can do, then erm, don't give up the day jobs, sorry.

I just don't get this film. I did not find this film hilarious. It had a couple of funny moments but nothing that would entice me to watch this film again.I watched this film based on the comments that other IMDb members left and felt disappointed enough to leave this review.The storyline just drags by slowly. I did not understand why Chris Klein's character was in the Karoke bar drunk and singing at the same time as one of the unemployed rabbits. It just lacked continuity with the role that was established earlier in the film and it wasn't all that funny.The script definitely needed more work to achieve any real humour but then again maybe I'm not the type to find two adults dressed up in bunny suits comedic enough.I would give this film a pass, unless you don't mind wasting a hour and half of your time. Peace.