Hank and Mike

With its unusual premise of a company that owns all American holidays and hires seasonal employees to be Easter bunnies who have the difficult job of delivering chocolate eggs to kids in the middle of the night, this should have been a cute comedy but alas, it fell flat.

My sister and I believed the DVD blurbs about it being a clever satire of corporate America and tried to watch it. The vulgarity and the repetitive jokes made that too much of a chore. There is nothing funny about two chain smoking, junk food eating, depressed people who are out of work. It should have come as no surprise to either Mike or Hank, since they were abusive to their fellow employees and sexually harassed every woman in the office. Characters can be sympathetic losers if they are lovable losers (as Bobcat Goldthwait was in HOT TO TROT). We could stand about a half hour of HANK AND MIKE and no more. I was sorry I rented it and still am!

I rented this movie without knowing anything about it and with no expectations. It turned out to be one of the funniest movies I have seen in a long time. Thomas Michael plays the role of a womanising, heavy drinker who is quite comfortable with his imperfections very well. His character is the deadpan needed for the running jokes throughout the movie. Mike, Paolo Mancini, lives for Easter and brilliantly plays the role of the straight laced guy, who's ready to snap at any moment. Hank and Mike complement each other perfectly, as the two Easter bunnies, with their individual glaring character flaws helping to highlight the underlying sense of reality throughout the film.

A stand out performance is Chris Klein, who plays an excellent role as a cut-throat contractor hellbent on making a fast buck at anyones expense, and has one of the best scenes singing The Burning Hells karaoke demonstrating how his character may be more tragic than the two bunnies put together.

The bunny suits are a brilliant visual aid and work extremely well to emphasise the darkest moments, of an already extremely dry comedy. The film would still work without the suits and Easter bunnies, but it would lack the satire along with the ability to draw you into a universe where being an Easter bunny is a job and that is how it is.

The film is not a rip-roaring comedy adventure in the world of hilarious Easter bunnys, but rather a tragic reality, where you cant help but laugh at the flaws, interactions and one liners the well developed characters have to offer, something akin to Arrested Development or Office Space as opposed to American Pie or anything with Rob Schneider.

If you take the time and allow yourself to be taken into their world without expectations of a blockbuster comedy, I hope you will be thankful and enjoy this gem that slipped under the radar.

Terrific dark comedy. The beauty of "Hank and Mike" is that the one joke premise has been nicely expanded into a feature. In addition to the black comedy, there is drama, and even a little romance. The idea of sponsored suicides, which is hysterically dark to begin with, is nicely melded into the plot. Like "Office Space" and "Bad Santa", the two movies I would say are closest to "Hank and Mike" , it is very re-watchable. There are some serious laugh out loud moments, nudity, gross out humor, and lots more. I would definitely think that "Hank and Mike" has an excellent possibility of achieving cult status. Highly recommended of it's type. - MERK

Hank and Mike is a pretty smart offering - off-beat, but on message, this is comedy with a heart as black as 100% pure cocoa: a sweetened center tempered with bitterness.

Cynical, surreal, and surprisingly insightful if you enjoyed Office Space you should enjoy this - it's kind of a mix of Bad Santa and Office Space with more that a small touch of the Odd Couple.

The alternative reality stuff was saved from being Elf-like by the booze, cigarettes, and foul-language; bless'em. There are only so many jokes about Easter bunnies that work, so they're avoided in the main, though the ones used are good too.

The humor is tight and a remarkably good satire emerges. It fails to be a total success, but as a quirky comedy with a gooey satirical center it flies.

An Easter Egg of a movie: didn't expect much but we laughed a lot.

Recommended.

I liked this comedy a lot more than I expected to when I got my hands on the screener. A film about two easter bunnies getting fired could go wrong in a lot of ways. But I found myself laughing out loud even though I was watching by myself which is rare.

There's some humor to be had in just watching guys in grubby easter bunny suits smoke, drink and screw their way through the film, but they also got a hold of Chris Klein for the role of Hubris the executive. He has perfect delivery and look for this market-gibberish-spewing near-con man, and his drunken karaoke performance of some The Burning Hells song I can't remember had me rolling.

Thomas Michael comes across very well as the sarcastic substance-abusing womanizer and Paolo Mancini serves very well in his role as the increasingly fed-up straight man who can only take so much before the inevitable explosion.

Mantegna was strangely in the background considering he is probably the most accomplished actor in the film, but I guess there wasn't much of a role for him really.

The bunny suits make for a lot of sight gags, especially the roid-raging bodybuilder who seems oddly at home in pink fur, and the scenes of them doing basic hygiene in costume.

Overall I thought it was one of the funnier comedies of the year but perhaps I just like bunny suits and hard living.