{"id":11659,"date":"2008-03-19T22:35:36","date_gmt":"2008-03-20T02:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=11659"},"modified":"2008-03-19T22:35:36","modified_gmt":"2008-03-20T02:35:36","slug":"the-easter-bunny-is-comin-to-town-1977","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/19\/the-easter-bunny-is-comin-to-town-1977\/","title":{"rendered":"The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town (1977)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"easter-bunny-is-coming12\"<\/a>So I sat here trying to think of reasons why I liked \u201cThe Easter Bunny\u2026\u201d and then after about three hours of sitting still and looking into a wall, I realized that I was being a little too easy on Rankin Bass. Even in this day and age, there\u2019s a certain charm to Rankin Bass and their stop motion creations. \u201cThe Easter Bunny\u2026\u201d has a great visual sense with character designs and pastels that are aesthetically pleasing and rather appealing to the eyes, and they\u2019re always nothing short of superb when providing special effects, even considering the time these movies were made.<\/p>\n

I just didn\u2019t like \u201cThe Easter Bunny is Coming to Town.\u201d Granted, for all the entertainment value it has in the way of cute characters, and bright landscapes, it\u2019s essentially a very formulaic retread. It\u2019s one thing to strike on the device that you built on one movie, but to do it again is just pushing it sometimes. \u201cThe Easter Bunny is Coming to Town\u201d relies on the very same story themes as \u201cSanta Claus\u2026\u201d relied on. There\u2019s our kindly post man, his trusty vehicle, his letters from children, and the odd moment of their questions that we\u2014apparently\u2014have been wondering about. Perhaps I\u2019m a bit too cynical, but I don\u2019t care why we color eggs, I don\u2019t care why Lillies are Easter flowers, and come on, we get new clothes on Easter because people go to church on Easter.<\/p>\n

But, I approached this movie with a stern optimism and I just didn\u2019t like it. I didn\u2019t care for Sunny the Easter Bunny who was once an abandoned rabbit discovered by children in Kidville and became a hero who delivered eggs and candy to people all over the world. The problem with Sunny is that he\u2019s not as interesting as Santa Claus. So, we\u2019re instead forced to sympathize for him, when really he has nothing that\u2019s remarkable about his origin, regardless of how hard they try to paint him with depth. And his insistence on telling children to stand up for themselves feels often very out of place with the general story themes.<\/p>\n

On the same spectrum, there\u2019s a constant struggle here in whether it wants to be a secular tale or a religious tale. So instead there are themes here and there connecting to religion, along with uses of the word \u201cLord\u201d thrown about, but it stays mired in the same superficial story about the creation of jelly beans and Easter Eggs. For Rankin Bass, this just isn\u2019t the best they\u2019ve put out for kids. In spite of the always pleasing animation and colorful set pieces, “The Easter Bunny is Coming to Town” is not the best in the Rankin Bass stop motion gallery with a story purely a retread of former outputs, and a boring lead character. The DVD is great, but you’d be hard pressed to enjoy it, all the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I sat here trying to think of reasons why I liked \u201cThe Easter Bunny\u2026\u201d and then after about three hours of sitting still and looking into a wall, I realized that I was being a little too easy on Rankin Bass. Even in this day and age, there\u2019s a certain charm to Rankin Bass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[71,99,310,340,349,471,580,700,819],"class_list":["post-11659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adventure","tag-animation","tag-e","tag-family","tag-fantasy","tag-holiday","tag-kids","tag-musical","tag-rankin-bass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}