Talking the Geeky Side of Hop With Russell Brand and James Marsden

It's sort of amazing when you think about it, but there really has never been a mainstream kids' movie about the Easter Bunny. When you consider how many movies there have been featuring Santa Claus, and the number of years Cadbury has been making commercials starring clucking rabbits, it really does make you wonder why this particular sector of the Holiday Movie genre has remained unexplored. Until now, of course.

I will freely admit that I didn't have high hopes for Hop when I was invited to go on a press junket for the film. I mean, my favorite holiday film is The Nightmare Before Christmas, which has a slightly... different tone from most other holiday films. And Easter isn't my holiday, though my wife and kids celebrate it -- albeit not religiously. Despite Hop's casting of Russell Brand as the voice of the main bunny character, I was afraid the film would be cloyingly sweet, too preachy about its message, or both.

I needn't have worried. I'll provide more detail* *in a "10 Things Parents Should Know About Hop" post tomorrow to coincide with the movie's premiere, but for now suffice it to say that *Hop *is funnier, better-acted and more flat-out charming than it has any right to be. But is it geeky?

And the answer to that is: Not particularly. I mean, it's 2011, and movies that seamlessly integrate CGI characters and settings with real settings and actors are no longer cutting-edge technology. But the film does star James Marsden, aka Cyclops/Scott Summers in the X-Men films, so there is at least that connection. And, as I found out at the roundtable discussion with him at the junket, Brand has a somewhat geeky side to him that you might not expect.

Marsden, who has two kids aged 10 and 5, had this to say about his kids' reaction to his X-Men fame:

I have a 10 year old boy and a five year old daughter and when my son was five he started to get to be that age where he was watching movies. And everyone was saying, “Wow, your son must love the fact that you're, you know, an X-Man.” I said, "No. He doesn't."

Now he’s old enough to get it, but my daughter is in that place now. She’s five and she likes Enchanted. Even in Enchanted, she will fast forward through all my scenes and get to the dragon. She doesn’t want to see me on screen. It’s weird for her.

Brand -- who was even funnier and more charming in person than I'd expected (and who after the roundtable interview kissed all of the bloggers present on the cheek, myself and the other dad blogger there included) -- has no kids, but got philosophical and even a bit geeky about the characters and story of the movie, particularly when asked whether he believed in the Easter Bunny (either when he was a kid or now):

I believe in the possibility of all things because of the nature of infinite space. If the universe is infinite, that means, inevitably, all possibilities exist.

So, somewhere, there is an Easter Bunny. Somewhere else, there's a one-legged Easter Bunny. Somewhere else, there's a robot Easter Bunny. There's an Easter Bunny crossed with Darth Vader because of infinity. With infinity, everything would occur.

I'm not sure his logic quite holds up under close scrutiny, but no matter. The important thing is that I wasn't able to find any crosses between the Easter Bunny and Darth Vader online (the closest I found was some mediocre videos of them "fighting"). If I were a visual artist, I would consider this a challenge. I'm just saying.

I hope I've managed to whet your appetite for Hop. Come back tomorrow for more details about the film itself -- trust me, you'll be glad you did. As I said, it's not particularly geeky, but it's good enough at what it is that that doesn't matter: It has a good shot at becoming a classic of the Holiday Movie genre. And that's a heck of a thing.

Check out the latest Hop trailer below:

Photos courtesy of Chris and Kristen Photography.