My Rabbit Hoppy
2008 · 3m · Australia
Directed by Anthony Lucas
Genres: comedy, experimental, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
In a mock school show-and-tell, two children present their pet rabbit Hoppy — an absurdly enormous animal who is clearly very unwell. The deadpan classroom exposition becomes a surreal three-minute joke.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A three-minute bit about a dying rabbit at show-and-tell shouldn't work, but Lucas treats the premise with such committed deadpan that it becomes genuinely unsettling—the kind of tonal whiplash between kid-friendly framing and actual wrongness that makes you question why you're laughing at something so deliberately uncomfortable.
The film's restraint and formal clarity—holding the classroom setup without commentary, letting the absurdity of scale and illness speak through pure observation—shows awareness of how surrealism functions best when filtered through documentary-like precision rather than stylistic flourish.
The entire film hinges on a single choice: casting an animal so grotesquely oversized and visibly decrepit that the mundane school setting becomes the joke, which means everything lands or nothing does—and Lucas commits so fully to that one gamble that it transforms a simple premise into something that feels inevitable.
Reviews
Absurde et décalé au possible, « My Rabit Hoppy » croque en trois minutes l'exposé de deux charmants enfants sur leur très, très gros animal de compagnie, Hoppy. Avec ce film, arrivé jusqu'à Cannes en 2008, nos amis aux longues oreilles nous font de l'effet.