The Prague Post
November 23rd, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Kill the wabbits!

A publicity exercise masquerading as a moronic comedy
Cinema Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 30th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Don't know jack. The hardly energized leads astray.
Hank and Mike


Directed by Matthiew Klinck
With Paolo Mancini, Thomas Michael, Chris Klein and Joe Mantegna
They are anthropomorphized in David Lynch’s Inland Empire, as creatures in a grim sitcom. One is a vicious killer in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which only the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch can defeat. And, in the brilliant montage that opens Harmony Korine’s Gummo, a half-feral boy sports their ears as he kills time on a freeway overpass in Xenia, Ohio.
In short, making rabbits menacing has cinematic, if not folkloric, pedigree. There is a definite frisson found in injecting the cuddly with the cruel.
The idea, then, of a film about two unemployed, dissolute Easter bunnies has some potential, particularly as rabbits in that holiday guise assume the odd symbolic mesh of being both sacrificial and wildly fertile. There are possibilities in that, none of which is to be found in Hank and Mike.
If this film feels like a bloated sketch, it’s because it is. Director Matthiew Klinck, an athlete of pedestrianism, first came up with his rakehell rabbits for a Canadian TV comedy show in the late ’90s. The characters were taken on by performers Thomas Michael (Hank) and Paolo Mancini (Mike), who have had a full decade to think about their roles. Yet no thinking seems to have been involved in this beef-witted enterprise, as Klinck and his furry eared mates are proud graduates of the turd, bong and dildo school of comedy. Hank and Mike is a steaming pile of witlessisms served with a side of vanity.
The narcissism that hangs over this festival of idiocies is stifling but understandable. Klinck has a definite following, though one that hardly seems bipedal. The scatophilia that Klinck specializes in seems to work as a diuretic among his fan base, who offer breathless Web site testimonials of how they “peed” themselves in the cinema from laughing (and spare a thought for the poor ushers who must clean the auditoriums between screenings). Wielding such power over bodily fluids has to go to one’s head after a while.
Yet Hank and Mike really belongs to a discussion on publicity rather than film. It’s an exercise in calculated marketing more than a movie striving toward any originality. There are many mini Hank and Mike segments on YouTube, should your bladder need flushing, including a segment that helpfully explains the otherwise baffling term “steak and face” (it’s the joint pleasure of eating a slab of sirloin while a stripper offers a gynecologist’s view of herself). Yet even this campaign blitz cannot conceal the paucity of talent and rampaging banality involved in the larger project.
Stretching their original skit must have seemed very tempting after the success of Bad Santa and Elf, especially the former, which Hank and Mike rob. The storyline, should you care to wade in, concerns the two egg-basket couriers getting fired after they skip a house on their Easter rounds. Their boss, Mr. Pan (Joe Mantegna in a whore gig), doesn’t really want to let them go. But he’s forced to act after a hair-producted business shark, Mr. Hubriss (Chris Klein), demands attention to Easter Corp.’s bottom line.
After that setup, we’re thrown into a pulseless series of cretinous vignettes of Hank and Mike attempting other jobs, including a stint as sewage truck workers (laughs galore) and as school aids (“Food fight!”). Their hapless employment counselor is one Connie Schytt (gittit?). Among crap-starved teens and those select adults born with an oxygen debt, this monument to arrogance and stupidity has been greeted with gibbering rapture. But why is Aero Films, the Czech distributors of Super Size Me, Red Road, Control, Shortbus and Sketches of Frank Gehry, involved in pushing this rubbish?
Watching it alone on DVD was work enough, but I was at least spared viewing it in a confined space filled with snorting dolts, nasally blowing Diet Pepsi into their popcorn tubs over Hank vomiting or Mike ingesting feces. But even by sitting through the entirety of Hank and Mike you’ll feel that you’ve expended far more time and energy on it than its smug assemblers. Where’s the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch when you need it?

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (30/07/2008):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.