NO HOP

This weekend, Hop opened first at the box office, grossing $38,188,140. The film, in which the Easter Bunny’s teenage son avoids his familial responsibilities, moving to LA to become a rock star- recovered half of its $63M budget. Not that there was high competition, but the success of Hop proves how much power children have as an audience. Here’s an excerpt from A.O Scott’s New York Times review:

Connoisseurs of the school of cinema in which fuzzy animated creatures interact with hard-working, slightly desperate-looking human actors may find themselves, if not exactly delighted, then at least pleasantly tickled. The rest of us, who endure such movies in the name of family harmony, masochism or lack of leisure-time imagination, may be happily surprised to emerge from the theater in something other than a state of murderous rage.

The success of Hop got me thinking about the great animated films of my childhood. A friend of mine calls the 1990’s the “cartoon renaissance” and although he was most likely referring to television, he’s got a point. The first film I ever saw in a theater was The Lion King, to which Hop doesn’t hold a candle, but my favorite animated feature of all-time has to be Fantasia. 

 

The original Fantasia, released in 1940, is a series of animated interpretations of western classical music...BRILLIANT.