One of the unexpected pleasures of this year’s vast SXSW slate of movies is Bunny, a kind of zany comic throwback to extreme indie NYC-centric movies that find a manic energy and rhythm that lets them exist on their own breathless cloud with a cast full of wacky characters moving in and out of frame in action that takes place almost entirely in an East Village tenement, or outside just in front of it. In some ways Bunny is an oddball cross of Weekend At Bernies, Abbott & Costello, Cheech & Chong, and a new age Marx Brothers movie, plus films of the Safdie Bros (particularly Uncut Gems) all the way back to Hal Ashby’s wonderful directorial debut with 1970’s The Landlord, another NYC tenement movie I kept thinking about watching this stew. Throw them all into a blender and you might have something resembling what first time director and co-star Ben Jacobson has cooked up with fellow writer (also with their co-writer Stefan Marolachakis) and star Mo Stark who plays the title character.
Set in one of those run-down, mouse-infested buildings with a diverse group of tenants who look like just the kind of people Trump would love to deport, the place nevertheless is teeming with life and seemingly non-stop activity on a hot summer day that also happens to be Bunny’s birthday. At the film’s start this sometimes hustler/sex worker is seen bloodied and running frantically through the streets, even stopping for a quick change of clothes before eventually coming into his apartment where his wife Bobbie (a spirited Liza Colby) has set up the ultimate gift with a girlfriend as they plan to offer him a three-way, but he is not in the mood due to some deep trouble as we soon see when a man follows him and winds up strangled by Bunny and dead.
Bunny also seems the jack-of-all-trades of the building as he deals with various tenants including helping with decorations for a big party that night. But with buddy Dino (Jacobson) helping, he now is preoccupied in figuring out how to dispose of this newly dead body. It gets richer from there when yet another man is found dead of a heroin overdose and must also be disappeared. It isn’t easy as there are two dimwit cops (Ajay Naidu and Liz Caribel Sierra) on the beat of this particular building and more to come complicating matters.
Most of the movie has nothing much on its mind other than creating a series of shenanigans ripe for comic exploitation, if not much credibility, but this is kind of movie where you just don’t want to think too hard about authenticity. It’s a romp and gives its cast much room to play. Among them are landlady (Linda Rong Mei Chen) , father-in-law (Tony Drazan), even an almost vegetative resident hooked 24/7 on all things-David Carradine (Oscar winning screenwriter Eric Roth turns up for this bit). There is also a needy orthodox Jewish woman (Genevieve Hudson-Price) on the premises this day, Henry Czerny as a rabbi, plus various others floating through the floors and the doors, and making Bunny’s birthday memorable in all the wrong ways.
Nicely shot by cinematographer Jackson Hunt with a constantly moving camera, Bunny has a talented leading man in Stark whose hapless expressions and preoccupation with staying alive and skirting the law keep us royally entertained along with the rest of this ragtag ensemble.
Producers Sarah Sarandos, Scott Dougan, Jacobson, Stark, and Marolachakis.
Title: Bunny
Festival: SXSW (Narrative Competition)
Sales Agent: CAA
Director: Ben Jacobson
Screenplay: Mo Stark, Ben Jacobson, Stefan Marolachakis
Cast: Mo Stark, Ben Jacobson, Tony Drazan, Liza Colby, Linda Rong Mei Chen, Genevieve Hudson-Price, Eleonore Hendricks, Kia Warren, Ajay Naidu, Liz Caribel, Richard Price, Eric Roth, Ben Groh, Michael Abbott Jr. , Noa Fisher, Jaeden Gomez, Yaz Perea, Henry Czerny
Running Time: 1 hour and 27 minutes.
