‘Bunny’ Review: Manic NYC East Village Tenement Comedy Goes Off The Wall In Search Of Laughs And Gets Them – SXSW

deadline.com:

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 New York City-centric movies that find a manic energy and rhythm that lets them exist on their own breathless cloud, with a cast 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 brothers (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 Donald 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.