I was a child of the 80s and grew up watching this special every single Easter. We even had a copy on a battered old VHS that my father had taped off of the television. So even if it didn't air on a network, we were still always able to see "The Easter Bunny is Comin' to Town" when Easter rolled around. It had literally been decades since I'd last seen it when I came across it on YouTube and decided to watch it for old time's sake. I vaguely remembered the plot and characters, and some bits of dialog verbatim, but I had forgotten quite a lot about this little special. I sat with my husband and hoped that I would be rediscovering a gem of my childhood that I could share with my own son in a few years. Boy was I wrong.
I'm a big fan of all the classic Rankin Bass stop-motion holiday specials, but this one? In a word, terrible. Even the rose-colored glasses of my childhood nostalgia couldn't save this one. In fact, I was shocked when I came on here to see that there was not one negative review for this appalling program. I felt compelled to write my own review, because someone needs to be honest here, this program is just not good.
For starters, this special is little more than "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" with the Easter Bunny shoe-horned into Santa's role. Complete with the Fred Astaire character and the reading of children's letters with questions for the Easter Bunny during the intro. Since when do children write letters to the Easter Bunny anyway? But I'll be kind and ignore this. It even looks like they've reused the same set for Somber Town that was used in "SCICTT", so it's very difficult to ignore the similarities. As with the Christmas special, the whole point of the show is to explain why we do certain things at Easter, but the scenarios they come up with to explain why we do certain Easter traditions are ridiculously laughable.
By far the worst explained Easter tradition is, "Why do we dress up on Easter?" There is a big mean bear who lives on the mountain that separates Kidville from the rest of the civilized world. Sunny the Easter Bunny decides that in order to warm the bear's icy heart, all he needs is a new suit of clothes. One minute the bear is all roaring and mean, but then once he sees his new clothes he becomes a sobbing mess and is a pushover for the rest of the film. This was the best they could come up with to explain wearing nice clothes on Easter? It makes my brain hurt.
Also I understand that this is a children's program and no one is expecting writing on par with Citizen Kane, but there are plot holes in this special big enough to float the Titanic through. It really feels like the people involved in this special didn't even try.
Sunny the Easter Bunny lives in a town called Kidville, where everyone is a kid, even the teachers and mayor. As the special progresses, several Easters pass, but not a single one of the children age a day. This could have easily been explained away with a quick mention of Kidville being a magical place, but not even that deus ex machina is utilized.
When the villains are trying to thwart Sunny in his attempts to bring a trainload of Easter goodies into town, their "brilliant" plan is that they put butter on the train rails to make the train slip. After this plan doesn't work out, they have absolutely nothing to fall back on. Seriously? You're supposed to be these awful villains hell-bent on destroying Easter, but after your buckets of butter don't work out you just give up? Lamest villains EVER. Not to mention that all it takes for the main villain to give up her mean ways is a flower. Seriously, a flower. One minute she's banning people from having children and forcing an entire town to eat nothing but beans, but give her a nice flower and she's suddenly sweet as pie.
The one nice thing I will say about this special, and the only reason I was kind enough to give it three stars, is the fact that all these years later some of the songs are still danged catchy. Also Sunny the Easter Bunny is very cute. So kudos to whoever did the song writing for this Easter special, and whichever character designer came up with Sunny, but shame on everyone else who was involved with it.
Needless to say, I think instead of ever watching this special with my son, we'll just color some eggs instead.
I'm a big fan of all the classic Rankin Bass stop-motion holiday specials, but this one? In a word, terrible. Even the rose-colored glasses of my childhood nostalgia couldn't save this one. In fact, I was shocked when I came on here to see that there was not one negative review for this appalling program. I felt compelled to write my own review, because someone needs to be honest here, this program is just not good.
For starters, this special is little more than "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" with the Easter Bunny shoe-horned into Santa's role. Complete with the Fred Astaire character and the reading of children's letters with questions for the Easter Bunny during the intro. Since when do children write letters to the Easter Bunny anyway? But I'll be kind and ignore this. It even looks like they've reused the same set for Somber Town that was used in "SCICTT", so it's very difficult to ignore the similarities. As with the Christmas special, the whole point of the show is to explain why we do certain things at Easter, but the scenarios they come up with to explain why we do certain Easter traditions are ridiculously laughable.
By far the worst explained Easter tradition is, "Why do we dress up on Easter?" There is a big mean bear who lives on the mountain that separates Kidville from the rest of the civilized world. Sunny the Easter Bunny decides that in order to warm the bear's icy heart, all he needs is a new suit of clothes. One minute the bear is all roaring and mean, but then once he sees his new clothes he becomes a sobbing mess and is a pushover for the rest of the film. This was the best they could come up with to explain wearing nice clothes on Easter? It makes my brain hurt.
Also I understand that this is a children's program and no one is expecting writing on par with Citizen Kane, but there are plot holes in this special big enough to float the Titanic through. It really feels like the people involved in this special didn't even try.
Sunny the Easter Bunny lives in a town called Kidville, where everyone is a kid, even the teachers and mayor. As the special progresses, several Easters pass, but not a single one of the children age a day. This could have easily been explained away with a quick mention of Kidville being a magical place, but not even that deus ex machina is utilized.
When the villains are trying to thwart Sunny in his attempts to bring a trainload of Easter goodies into town, their "brilliant" plan is that they put butter on the train rails to make the train slip. After this plan doesn't work out, they have absolutely nothing to fall back on. Seriously? You're supposed to be these awful villains hell-bent on destroying Easter, but after your buckets of butter don't work out you just give up? Lamest villains EVER. Not to mention that all it takes for the main villain to give up her mean ways is a flower. Seriously, a flower. One minute she's banning people from having children and forcing an entire town to eat nothing but beans, but give her a nice flower and she's suddenly sweet as pie.
The one nice thing I will say about this special, and the only reason I was kind enough to give it three stars, is the fact that all these years later some of the songs are still danged catchy. Also Sunny the Easter Bunny is very cute. So kudos to whoever did the song writing for this Easter special, and whichever character designer came up with Sunny, but shame on everyone else who was involved with it.
Needless to say, I think instead of ever watching this special with my son, we'll just color some eggs instead.
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