Monday, March 21, 2011

Illumination Entertainment's Movie #2

I.E.'s second animated feature, unlike the first, was created in Los Angeles. While the animation was not covered by a TAG contract, the storyboarding was. A dozen guild board artists worked on the picture, some for a year. ...

As Cinema Blend notes:

... [T]his trailer mostly revolves around an evil, incredibly cute, fluffy yellow chick plot to overthrow the bunny management who runs the factory where Easter is produced. They do this with a wide assortment of chocolate guns and nefarious plotting. ...

I don't think you can miss with fuzzy chicks and cute Easter bunnies, but we'll see. As one of the artists who worked on Hop related to me today:

Christmas themed movies, they usually get released in November and run until after New Year's. But Easter movies? I don't know how long the shelf life is ..."

Very shortly we'll find out.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Although the story seems stupid, at least the animation looks good. The characters look very appealing and cute unlike other recent live-action/animation hybrids such as Yogi Bear, Alvin & the Chipmunks, The Smurfs etc. God, those smurfs look ugly and creepy.

Anonymous said...

It's in par with mars needs moms, rango, and astroboy. Awful.

Anonymous said...

I just saw Hop at the crew screening, since I'm friends with one of the TDs. It's not awful at all. In fact, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Like the first poster said, the characters are very cute, and they're well animated. There are a few sequences that are completely CG (no live action blend), and those were the strongest parts of the movie. I think it's safe to say that it's aimed at a fairly young crowd, but I had a good time. I think R&H really stepped up their game with this film.

whatevah! said...

The trailer for 'Rango' did not do it justice. I went to see it because word of mouth was good. And what do you know...The movie was a lot of fun. The photograpfy was amazing, the animation was great, and the characters were very interesting. The plot was pretty much a scrambled version of Polansky's "Chinatown".
The trailer for 'HOP' was in front of the movie, and I gotta agree that the animation looks really good on it.

Anonymous said...

Practically all of the movie's production hype revolved around "Russell Brand comes to CGI...He's a BAD bunny!"
Brand--who seems to be utterly convinced he has a breakout career in the US just because MTV promised him one--has yet to release two of his three surefire "hit" movies since he started his North American campaign, and most of the audience is already buying him the plane ticket home.
(And which didn't help the "corporate marketing" image of studio-CGI, that studios believed they could promote anything in a thrown-together feature, so long as it Looked Like Dreamworks.)

While the trailer looks average, the movie has a big, big uphill battle to live down what they've already started, and trying to promote the movie itself as just a lil' anonymous Easter lark for the kiddies.
If it can hit gullible audiences, gullible audiences are what it will get.

Anonymous said...

The above comment from 10:39 is a great example of an internet 'expert' whose only experience and expertise involves talking to himself in his parent's basement.

"Practically all" the production hype is about Russel Brand and his personna? Really? I've seen a ton of advertising for the film, and barely any of it involves Brand.

I know quite a few people who are interested in seeing the film based on the trailers and the little bits on Fox, and they were all surprised to find out Russel Brand does a voice. They were also surprised to find out that Hugh Laurie and Hank Azaria are the other key voices.

People who don't have a clue what they're talking about should learn to keep quiet. Oh, wait, this is the internet, the last frontier for the misinformed loud mouth.

Jay said...

"Practically all of the movie's production hype revolved around "Russell Brand comes to CGI...He's a BAD bunny!"

Russell Brand is mentioned no where in the above trailer or even on the posters (unless its in super small print). If anything, the advertisements emphasize Despicable Me more than the stars of the movie, which, considering its success with families, probably isn't a bad idea.

Anonymous said...

I think they are wise to not mention russell brand as well. The guy isn't funny at all and if anything is a little creepy.

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