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Easter Bunnies behaving badly – Metro US

Easter Bunnies behaving badly

With the nation still being swallowed by the all-consuming recession, the threat of losing your livelihood is a terrifying possibility and no one is safe, not even a pair of pink, fuzzy and perennially peeved Easter bunnies.

Said bunnies exploits are chronicled in Hank and Mike, a fiercely funny wallow in vulgar absurdity directed by Matthew Klinck and starring Paolo Mancini and Thomas Michael (who also co-wrote) as the titular naughty rabbits.

The film — opening today in select markets — sees the disgruntled blue (pink?) collared egg stashers Hank and Mike getting downsized from their not-so lucrative gig at Easter Inc. and launching an all out, booze fuelled war against good taste (the movie most certainly earns its R rating).

But as co-star/creator Mancini say, the refreshingly off-colour film isn’t just about watching a couple of bunnies with 5 o’clock shadow behaving badly.

“We tried to make the characters as real as possible,” Mancini said. “The idea was that these are really just two regular, union guys in a bad situation.

“If they were just mailmen, I think the movie would be just as funny and relevant. Basically, if you start to forget about the bunny suits and lose yourself in the characters as people, we’ve done our job.”

Admittedly, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the cussing, spitting, coke sniffing, stripper-groping and eventually homicidal anti-heroes in Hank and Mike are sporting droopy ears and perky white tails.

And it’s that straight faced, never really addressed narrative abstraction that’s been steadily stoking the film’s cult status since it first started playing festivals in 2008. In fact, Mancini and Michael are already thinking of a sequel.

“If we made a follow-up, we’d cast Hank and Mike in a buddy cop story,” Michael says somewhat seriously.

“The movie would open up with the bunnies being fired again from Easter Inc. and they’re now police officers, living in a boat, getting yelled at by their cigar chomping superior. And of course, Brigitte Neilson would be in it.”