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STUDIO: Warner Brothers
MSRP: $14.98
RATED: Not
Rated
RUNNING TIME:
50 min
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- The Magic of Stop Motion – A
Gallery of Shorts - 3 Family-Friendly Selections
- Breakfast of
Magicians - Floating
Through - The Easter
Express
The Pitch
Fred Astaire teaches the youth about the Easter Bunny’s true
origins.
The Humans
Fred Astaire, Skip Hennant, Laura Dean, Allen Swift, Robert McFadden and Michael McGovern
Hello, kids! It’s the star of The Towering Inferno. No, it’s not Paul Newman or Steve McQueen or just forget it. Stupid damn kids.
The Nutshell
The Easter Bunny’s Comin’ to Town is a fun
special that teaches kids about why we celebrate Easter. They just omit the
Jesus stuff and everything else that gives Mel Gibson a reason to keep making
movies. If you can handle a hobo named Hallelujah Jones hanging out with a town
full of kids, then this is right up your alley. If you’re over the age of
eight, this might be a little too much.
The Lowdown
Rankin and Bass took a lot of credit for work that they
didn’t actually perform. Most of these Holiday Specials you watched as a child
were animated in
But, what do you remember? You remember that giant ass Rankin & Bass logo
before the start of each program. All bitching aside, The Easter Bunny’s
Comin’ to Town has a certain appeal to it that’s lacking in other
specials.
Who wants to poke Ginger Rogers’ corpse with a stick?
This Easter special doesn’t get re-ran to Hell like its
Christmas and Thanksgiving counterparts. You don’t have cards, novelties and
other merchandise with this version of the Easter Bunny plastered all over it.
It’s just kind of faded to that point of obscurity where it becomes an oddity.
I spent most of the first viewing telling people that the narrator was Fred
Astaire and not some of their bizarre guesses. What’s wrong with people?
Fred Astaire plays our narrator S.D. Kluger. He’s the local
mailman who takes the little Engine that could around Kidtown to deliver the
mail. Kluger tells the viewers about the orphaned Sunny the Bunny. Sunny grows
up strong and teaches Kidtown to come together. Eventually, he makes his way
into the nearby Kingdom where he meets the kid King that rules over them all.
But, the King’s Aunt Lily Longtooth is lording over the young King Bruce and is
pushing him to make laws that she created.
This is the last face that many hobos and Green River prostitutes will ever see.
When she finds out that her nephew is befriending the Bunny,
she makes him ban Easter Eggs. Sunny gets stuck in an uncomfortable position,
as he has to think up new ways to celebrate Easter. This leads to a ton of
uninspired scenes where we learn the truth behind Chocolate Bunnies, Jelly
Beans and other traditions. Then, there’s the bum Hallelujah Jones. Jones is
such an odd character to just randomly jam into the middle of the story.
The Easter Special has no point, as it just randomly bounces
back and forth between a narrative and random Christian underpinnings. By the
time I finished the special, I came to learn why no one really remembers or
adores this special. There’s nothing to like about it. Fred Astaire’s narration
is the only cohesive factor that actually hangs the action. I wish that WB would’ve
had an audio track that takes out Astaire’s narration.
They mostly come out at night…mostly.
You’d only have about half of the spoken dialogue with odd
scenes such as a Rabbit teaching a kid how to eat hard boiled eggs. But, with
all of its faults, it still can keep kids entertained. That’s got to count for
something. Doesn’t it?
The Package
The Easter Bunny’s Comin’ to Town comes to
with a standard single-disc release. The single disc brings the feature along
with an interesting look at Stop-Motion. By interesting, I mean three awkwardly
developed juvenile tales. If this was placed on the
to make the main feature look better, then I have to tip my hat to the powers
that be at Warner Brothers. Otherwise, it just looks like someone took a dump
on the data space left on the disc.
Harold “Hallelujah” Jones: Presumed Dead. Last seen in the company of Fred Astaire and a talking train.
The A/V Quality on the
is a vast improvement over the previous Warner Brothers release. The mono
soundtrack is clean, but the transfer is the most impressive thing about this
release. It’s been 31 years since the first broadcast and every inch of this
transfer looks like it was cut yesterday. There’s no dirt, digital noise or any
sign of artifacting. Warner Brothers has been doing amazing work cleaning up
their kiddie titles recently and this release is no exception.
6.9 out of 10