There's only so much time you can devote to scoffing chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday. So, why not gather the family for an afternoon watching films about the Easter Bunny? Cinema Paradiso has some suggestions in mind.
You could always start with Ute von Münchow-Pohl's Rabbit School: Guardians of the Golden Egg (2017), which sees city slicker Max crash his plane in the woods and discover the secret training school for Easter Bunnies. However, a gang of foxes has set its sights on taking over the festival and plans to steal the school's prized golden egg.
If you've already seen this lively adventure, you may want to venture out to the cinema for a holiday treat with the kids to see Von Münchow-Pohl's sequel, Rabbit Academy: Mission Eggpossible. This time, Max becomes the first city rabbit to enrol at the school. But he and Emmy need to develop superpowers in order to stop Leo, the weaselly Shockwave Rabbit, from betraying their secrets to the foxes, who still have designs on the stash of Easter eggs.
Ears and Whiskers
Where better to start Cinema Paradiso's survey of rabbits on screen than with the adored children's books that have inspired so many favourite films? Gavin Millar explored the origins of the most enduring in Dreamchild (1985), which speculates on the psychological impact on the young girl for whom Alice in Wonderland was written under the pen name of Lewis Carroll following a boating trip along an Oxford river on 4 July 1862. Flashing back from a visit to New York, Dennis Potter's screenplay has Alice Hargreaves (Coral Browne) encounter characters like the March Hare (unsettlingly re-imagined by Jim Henson Creature Shop) in reflecting upon her relationship with Christ Church academic Charles Dodgson (Ian Holm).
Three years passed between the idyllic summer outing and the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with its magnificent illustrations by John Tenniel. A sequel, Through the Looking Glass, appeared in 1871 and film-makers have often cherry-picked characters and incidents from each text in creating their screenplays. The first film version, Alice in Wonderland (1903), was co-directed by Percy Stow and Cecil Hepworth, whose wife played both the Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit. Even the family dog got involved, although Blair would get to be centre stage in Lewin Fitzhamon's Rescued By Rover (1905), which can be found on the BFI's Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers (2005), alongside William Haggar's Desperate Poaching Affray (1903), in which the police chase a couple of men caught snaring rabbits.
Three decades later, Richard 'Skeets' Gallagher played the White Rabbit and Charlie Ruggles the March Hare, as Charlotte Henry headlined Norman Z. McLeod's Alice in Wonderland (1933), which also featured Paramount stars Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle, WC Fields as Humpty Dumpty and Gary Cooper as the White Knight. While this version was on release, Walt Disney acquired the rights to the Tenniel drawings. But the plan to star Mary Pickford with animated characters proved beyond the studio and
Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske's Alice in Wonderland (1951) stuck to the straight graphic format. Bill Thompson and Jerry Colonna voiced the White Rabbit and the March Hare, alongside Kathryn Beaumont as Alice (after Disney had turned down the 40 year-old Ginger Rogers's entreaties to play the role).
Disney's sometimes surreal interpretation found a new audience in the Swinging Sixties. However, Jonathan Miller's live-action take of Alice in Wonderland (1966) for the BBC had its own trippy moments. Wilfrid Brambell played the White Rabbit without make-up and Wilfrid Lawson did the same as the March Hare. A sitar score by Ravi Shankar and spiritedly impassive lead from Ann-Marie Mallik has made this de-anthropomorphised interpretation a firm cult favourite.
Fiona Fullerton took the title role in William Sterling's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972), which cast Michael Crawford as the White Rabbit and Peter Sellers as the March Hare (after he had been the King of Hearts for Miller) in a charming musical that boasted songs by John Barry and Don Black and earned BAFTAs for its cinematography and costumes. Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010) won Oscars for its costumes and art direction in using computer-generated imagery and 3-D to retell episodes from each of Lewis Carroll's tomes. Michael Sheen voiced Nivens McTwisp (aka the White Rabbit), while Paul Whitehouse essayed Thackery Earwicket (aka the March Hare) and they returned for a second tour of duty in James Bobin's Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), which Burton co-produced.
Cinema Paradiso makes both films available on high-quality DVD, Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D. Try getting choice like that from a streaming site. Indeed, it's unlikely they would also offer such variations on the theme as Adam Rezek's Alice in Wonderland: A Dance Fantasy (1985), Toshiyuki Hiruma's Alice in Wonderland (1995), John Henderson's Alice Through the Looking Glass (1998), Nick Willing's Alice in Wonderland (1999), Daniel Barnz's Phoebe in Wonderland (2008), Simon Fellows's Malice in Wonderland (2009), Michael Conroy's Alice in Wonderland, Philip Gardiner's The Initiation of Alice in Wonderland (both 2010), Jonathan Haswell's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2011), and Yasuo Ishiwara's Hello Kitty and Friends: Alice in Wonderland (2013).
But we've saved the best version of Carroll's mind-bending tale to last. Having flirted with Jabberwocky (1971) - which can be found on The Complete Short Films (2007) - Czech animation maestro Jan Švankmajer made Alice (1988), which used puppets, live-action and stop-motion to produce a disarming satire on authoritarianism, which includes the terrifyingly memorable moment when a stuffed White Rabbit rips itself off its mounting in order to disappear through a desk drawer into Wonderland. He spends the rest of the film using a spoon to shovel sawdust back into his innards through a gaping wound. No wonder Alice (Kristýna Kohoutová) faces the camera to state: 'Now you will see a film. Made for children. Perhaps.'
The creation of another much-loved character is recalled by Chris Noonan in Miss Potter (2007), which includes animated snippets of Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddleduck and Mr Jeremy Fisher in chronicling the relationships between Beatrix Potter (Renée Zellwegger) and her parents and the family of her publisher. And there's more biographical detail on offer in David Kerr's Roald & Beatrix: The Tale of a Curious Mouse (2020), in which Potter (Dawn French) entertains a six year-old Dahl (Harry Tayler) at her Cumbrian farm in 1922.
Potter's own enchanting drawings were the inspiration for the animations contained in The Beatrix Potter Collection (1995), which includes such rabbit delights as The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, The Tale of Mr Tod: The Further Adventures of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies. These were the first animated versions of the stories, as the estate had turned down Walt Disney's request for the rights. However, they were entrusted to producer Richard Goodwin and his designer wife, Christine Edzard, who won a brace of BAFTAs for her work on Reginald Mills's The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971), which was choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton and danced by members of the Royal Ballet.
Alexander Grant impishly plays both Peter Rabbit and Pigling Bland in a fantasia scored by John Lanchbery. If only such finesse had gone into Will Gluck's Peter Rabbit (2018), which had a narrative brashness that complemented the CGI visuals and James Corden's vocal performance. But younger audiences revelled in the duels between Peter, Benjamin (Colin Moody), Flopsy (Margot Robbie), Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki) and Cottontail (Daisy Ridley) and their garden-owning nemeses, Mr McGregor (Sam Neill) and his great nephew Thomas (Domhnall Gleason).
In the sequel, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (2021), Gluck sends up the notion of turning revered children's stories into cash cows, as Thomas's wife, Bea (Rose Byrne), takes Peter and his sisters to London to meet her publisher, Nigel Basil-Jones (David Oyelowo). However, Peter dislikes the plan to promote him as a scamp and he gets lost in the city after bumping into his father's old garden-raiding partner, Barnabas (Lennie James), and they wind up in an animal pound.
The success of the dualogy came on the back of a 58-strong Nickelodeon and CBeebies series, Peter Rabbit (2012-16). This saw Peter (Connor Fitzgerald and Harry Henty) and Benjamin Bouncer (Danny Price) befriend Lily Bobtail (Harriet Perring and Poppy Labrosse). Cinema Paradiso users can choose between a number of compilations directed by David McCamley, including Peter Rabbit: Tales of the Start of Spring, Peter Rabbit: The Tale of the Great Breakout (both 2013), Peter Rabbit: The Tale of the Great Rabbit and Squirrel Adventure, Peter Rabbit: The Tale of True Friends, Peter Rabbit's Christmas Tale (all 2014), Peter Rabbit: The Tale of the Unexpected Hero, Peter Rabbit: The Tale of Peter's Great Escape, Peter Rabbit: The Tale of Cottontail's New Friend, and Peter Rabbit: The Tale of the Christmas Star (all 2015).
While Peter has gone on to become a leporine superstar, Rabbit can still pass through Hundred Acre Wood without fans asking for autographs. He remains a key part of Winnie the Pooh's world, however, and appears in several of the titles that have been spun-off from the A.A. Milne stories whose origins have been explored in two biopics, Simon Curtis's Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017) and Marc Forster's Christopher Robin (2018).
Famously, Pooh got stuck in the entrance to Rabbit's home in Disney's Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (Wolfgang Leitherman, 1966), which can be found on The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (2002). Sterling Holloway and Junius Matthews voice the pair and they reunited in Reitherman's Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) and John Lounsbery's Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974), which can be found on the same disc.
Rabbit (Ken Sansom) tries to ban the sending of cards on 14 February in Winnie the Pooh: Un-Valentine's Day (1995), but he's back in the ranks as a supporting character in such other Disney offerings as Jun Falkenstein's The Tigger Movie (2000), Francis Glebas's Piglet's Big Movie (2003), Frank Nissen's Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005) and Stephen Anderson and Don Hall's Winnie the Pooh (2011). There are several other related titles on the books. Tap a tubby little cubby's name into the Cinema Paradiso searchline to see what else Rabbit, Eeyore, Owl, Kanga, Roo and, most of all, Winnie the Pooh, have been up to.
What's Up, Doc?
A number of cartoon bunnies have graced the screen over the decades. Among the first was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who was created for Universal in 1927 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The pair produced 28 monochrome shorts before the studio took control of the character and he was drawn by in-house animators until 1938, leaving Disney to come up with the similar looking Mickey Mouse to take his place.
In 2006, Disney bought back the rights to Oswald and he guested in Lauren MacMullan's short, Get a Horse!, which was the first new Mickey Mouse cartoon since 1995. It can be found on the DVD and Blu-ray of Chris Buck and Jennifer's Lee's Frozen (both 2013), while the story of how Disney dreamt up Oswald is told in Khoa Lee's biopic, Walt Before Mickey (2015).
In 1934, Disney mined Aesop's Fables for
Wilfred Jackson's The Tortoise and the Hare (1934), in which the speedy Max gets so distracted that the steady Toby wins the race. This Oscar-winning short and its sequel, Toby Tortoise Returns (1936), are available from Cinema Paradiso on Walt Disney Treasures: Silly Symphonies: The Historic Musical Animated Classics (2001). However, the studio moved away from bunnies with the creation of Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto. Which left the way open for Warner Bros to launch its most popular cartoon character.
Although a prototype appeared in Ben Hardaway's Porky's Hare Hunt (1938), Bugs Bunny officially came into being as he outsmarted Elmer Fudd in Tex Avery's Oscar-nominated gem, A Wild Hare (1940). Both were produced by Leon Schlesinger and the latter can be found on Volume 4 of Looney Tunes: Golden Collection (2006). The same selection contains Friz Freleng's Knighty Knight Bugs (1958), which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short.
Mel Blanc provides the wisecracking voice, as he did on some 3000 cartoons during a peerless career. Bugs himself featured in over 160 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies over 24 years at Warner Bros, which earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985. The year before, a cuddly toy version of Bugs Bunny had been pushed aside by Stripe in Joe Dante's Gremlins (1984). Amusingly, Bugs had actually confronted a sabotaging gremlin in Falling Hare (1943), which can be found on Volume 3 of Looney Tunes: Golden Collection and on Bugs Bunny and Friends (2006).
Dante would direct Bugs and Daffy Duck (both voiced by Joe Alaskey) in Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), which combined animated and live-action sequences, as the duo help Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman prevent Steve Martin's Acme Corporation from acquiring the Blue Monkey diamond that could turn humans into apes. However, Bugs had already ventured into features in Joe Pytka's Space Jam (1996), in which he teamed up with basketball legend Michael Jordan for a game between the Tune Squad and the Nerdlucks from the Moron Mountain outer space amusement park. When LeBron James stepped into Jordan's sneakers for Malcolm D. Lee's Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021), he was rewarded for his efforts in the match-up between the Tunes and the Goons with a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor.
More a compilation than an original outing, Friz Freleng's Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie (1981) set a trend for collating Warner shorts and Volume 2 of Looney Tunes: Golden Collection includes What's Opera, Doc? (1957), which became the first cartoon to be preserved by the National Film Registry established by the Library of Congress.
Cinema Paradiso users can take their pick from numerous Bugs Bunny selections, including Bugs Bunny's Howl-Oween Special (1978), Bugs Bunny: Looney Tunes Christmas (1979), Daffy Duck's: Easter Egg-Citement (1980), Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island (1983), Baby Bugs Bunny (2002), Looney Tunes: Best of Bugs Bunny (2004), Bah, HumDuck!: A Looney Tunes Christmas (2006), Bugs Bunny (2010), and Wabbit: Hare-Raising Tales (2016). An interesting variation was Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run (2015), which sees Lola Bunny take possession of a flower that has the power to make things invisible.
Disney didn't abandon rabbits altogether, of course. While Bugs was doing his bit for Uncle Sam in several wartime propaganda shorts, Thumper was created by animator Marc Davis for Bambi (David Hand, 1942) in order to lighten the mood of the studio's fifth animated feature, which was inspired by a 1923 book by Felix Salten. Voiced by four year-old Peter Behn, this mischievous sidekick was inspired by Benjamin Bunny. He teaches the little faun to ice skate and was famously told by his father, 'If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.'
Thumper appears with his sisters, Trixie, Daisy, Ria and Tessie in Bambi II (Brian Pimental, 2006), which was released two years after he had guested in The Lion King 3: Hakuna Matata (Bradley Raymond, 2004). Bond fans will also know that Thumper and Bambi were the names of the female bodyguards giving Sean Connery a rough time in Guy Hamilton's Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
Disney had long wanted to adapt some of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus folk tales. He finally released Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson's Song of the South in 1946 and James Baskett received an Honorary Academy Award for his performance as the old storyteller. But the plantation setting and the stereotypical depiction of the Black characters has resulted in the film being shelved. However, the animated sequences outlining Br'er Rabbit's encounters with Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear were later released as stand-alone items and inspired such non-Disney animations as Al Guest and Jean Mathieson's Brer Rabbit's Christmas Carol (1992) and Byron Vaughns's The Adventures of Brer Rabbit (2006).
Although the hero of Disney's Robin Hood (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1973) was a fox, he was very protective of Mother Rabbit and her many offspring. Indeed, on Skippy's seventh birthday, Robin disguises himself as a blind beggar in order to slip past the tax-collecting Sheriff of Nottingham and delight Sis and Tagalong by gifting their brother a bow and arrow. Unfortunately, Skippy fires an arrow into Prince John's palace and gets embarrassed when Maid Marian tries to kiss him when he goes to retrieve it. He later winds up in jail with his mother and 13 siblings, but goes on to play his part in helping Robin win the day.
The mood was much darker in Martin Rosen's Watership Down (1978), which brought Richard Adams's bestseller to shocking animated life. When Fiver (Richard Briers) has a vision that their warren is going to be destroyed, he convinces Hazel (John Hurt) to lead a party to a new home. Among the group are Bigwig (Michael Graham Cox), Blackberry (Simon Cadell) and Pipkin (Roy Kinnear). But dangers lie ahead from other creatures and from such fierce rabbits as General Woundwort (Harry Andrews).
With Art Garfunkel's rendition of 'Bright Eyes' adding to the poignancy, this landmark pictures spawned a spin-off series (1999-2000) and a 2018 remake.
Lettuce Praise CGI
Before computer-generated imagery changed animation forever, Richard Williams was tasked to supervise the cel work and optical compositing required to unite live-action and graphic characters in Robert Zemeckis's epochal, three-time Oscar winner, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Charles Fleischer voices the eponymous hero, whose love of socko cartoon comedy drives private eye Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) to the point of despair, as he seeks to clear his client of the murder of the president of the Acme Corporation, Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye), who had been consorting with Roger's wife, Jessica (Kathleen Turner).
Adding to the fun of this gleeful pastiche of 1940s film noir are the cameos made by Bugs Bunny and his Warner pals, as well as Disney stalwarts Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. And further binding the picture into the Hollywood tradition is the fact that Roger is the Thumper's nephew!
One of the regulars supporting Dougal, Brian and Florence in the BBC teatime favourite, The Magic Roundabout (1965-92), was a stoner rabbit named Dylan. Voiced by Eric Thompson, he wandered through stories clutching a guitar and singing the odd song between extended naps. He's glimpsed briefly at the beginning of Serge Danot's Dougal and the Blue Cat (1970), but has a larger role to play in stopping Zebadee's evil twin, Zeebad, in The Magic Roundabout (2005). This CGI feature led to a small-screen reboot, with Nigel Planer taking over the narration of The Magic Roundabout: Dougal's Darling, The Wishing Tree, Treasure Beyond Measure, and Rockstar Dylan (all 2007).
Musical aspirations also persuade E.B. (Russell Brand) to quit the Easter Bunny training school in Tom Hill's Hop (2011). But, while he enjoys a drumming session with The Blind Boys of Alabama and his ventriloquist rendition of 'I Want Candy', E.B. knows his first duty is to help his father, Mr Bunny (Hugh Laurie), when Carlos the Chick (Hank Azaria) plots to take over Easter.
Keeping varmits at bay is also the storyline of Disney's 45th feature, Home on the Range (Will Finn and John Sanford, 2004). The onus falls on cows Maggie (Roseanne Barr), Grace (Jennifer Tilly) and Mrs Calloway (Judi Dench) to save the Patch of Heaven farm by thwarting rustler, Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid). But they get plenty of spirited assistance from Lucky Jack (Charles Haad), a jackrabbit who keeps falling foul of his foes and not only gets cactus spikes in his foot when he kicks a wanted poster, but he also sees his wooden leg catch fire.
Spoilers prevent us from saying too much about Boingo the Bunny (Andy Dick) in Cory Edwards's Hoodwinked! (2005). He seems to be one of Red Puckett's woodland friends, but appearances can be deceptive in this hilarious spin on the Red Riding Hood story. Suffice to say, Boingo returns in Mike Desa's Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs Evil (2011).
Just as determined to get his own way is Alec Azam, the white rabbit who refuses to co-operate with a stage magician until he gets his promised carrot in Doug Sweetland's Presto (2008). Shown in theatres with Andrew Stanton's WALL-E, this brilliant Oscar-nominated short can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 2 2012). Volume 1 contains Bud Luckey's Boundin' (2003), which accompanied Brad Bird's The Incredibles (2004) in cinemas. This centres on the friendship between a dancing lamb and a jackalope who teaches him how to bound across the Wild West prairie.
Speaking of shorts, Chris Wedge won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short with Bunny (1998), which turns on the battle of wills between an elderly female rabbit and a pesky moth. Wedge went on to direct Ice Age (2002) and a Palaeolagus-like rabbit named Squint turns up among Captain Gutt's piratical crew in Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier's Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (2012).
Vanquishing a dastardly foe is the lot that falls to Fu (Jon Heder), a rabbit who would rather cook pancakes than learn martial arts. But, when his monkey master's school comes under threat from Slash the panda (Michael Clarke Duncan) in Sun Yijun's Legend of Kung Fu Rabbit (2011), Fu has to go to Capital City and rise to the challenge with Penny the cat (Rebecca Black) and her sidekick, Biggie the bunny (Claire Geare). And there's more floppy-eared heroics in Ma Yuan and Dong Dake's sequel, Rise of the Rabbit (2015), in which Fu has to prevent the scheming Zhan from taking over the village after he discovers that he's lost his fighting skills.
The looming presence of Pitch Black (Jude Law) prompts Jack Frost (Chris Pine) to rally some friends to the cause in Peter Ramsey's Rise of the Guardians (2012). Alongside
Nicholas St North (Alec Baldwin), Toothiana (Isla Fisher) and the silent Sandy the Sandyman stands E. Aster Bunnymund (Hugh Jackman), the Guardian of Hope and bringer of Easter eggs, who is ready to defend childlike imagination.
Although he starts out plotting a revolution against pets and their human owners, Snowball (Kevin Hart) turns out to have a nice side in Chris Renaud's The Secret Life of Pets (2016). A discarded magician's assistant, Snowball is the leader of the Flushed Pets in the sewer. But he has a change of heart when he helps Max (Louis C.K.) and Duke (Eric Stonestreet) escape from the dog pound. Indeed, having been coddled by a little girl named Molly (Kiely Renaud), Snowball starts dreaming of becoming a superhero and gets his chance in The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019), when a Shih Tzu called Daisy (Tiffany Haddish) asks him to help rescue a white tiger cub from the cruel circus owner, Sergei (Nick Kroll).
Doing the right thing is also the ambition of Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), a hayseed from Bunnyburrow who is determined to become a cop in Byron Howard and Rich Moore's Zootopia (2016). Being the first rabbit on the local force, she's relegated to parking duties by Chief Bogo (Idris Elba). However, he gives her 48 hours to find some missing animals and she receives unexpected help from con-tricking fox, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman).
With its knowing nods towards Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) and Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), the 56th Disney feature completed the hat-trick of Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA. Bafflingly, while it took the other two awards, Nick Park and Steve Box's Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) wasn't even nominated for a Golden Globe (or the Golden Carrot, for that matter). This masterclass in stop-motion technique sees our heroes running a business called 'Anti-Pesto'. However, when Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter) hires them to save the annual Giant Vegetable Competition, they have their work cut out squeezing the giant veg-scoffing Hutch into their patented Bun Vac 6000.
