On the surface, Hop is just a rehashing of those Santa Clause movies with Tim Allen—some dumb schlub discovers that his true calling is to become a fictitious character who stars in a major Christian holiday: “Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Easter!” (Yes, that’s an actual line.) But unfortunately for Hop, the gags aren’t funny and the characters are not at all memorable.

It’s the story of two slackers, Fred O’Hare (James Marsden), a twenty- or thirtysomething guy who lives with his parents and is constantly disappointing his dad by being a total loser, and E.B (Russell Brand), an animated rabbit and heir to the Easter Bunny Dynasty who doesn’t care about his familial duty and just wants to play drums in a pop punk band or something.

E.B. runs away to Hollywood just before he is supposed to be sworn in as the new Easter Bunny, which totally bums out his dad. (Dads are sooooo hard to please!) Fred and E.B. eventually run into each other, and Fred gets pretty freaked out about this talking-rabbit thing. But he isn’t too freaked out, because he (reluctantly) befriends E.B. and decides to help him get a drumming gig. Oh, and Fred just loves Easter and soon realizes that he wants to be an Easter Bunny, too. (Dad is going to be sooooo proud.)

In the movie’s one funny scene, a totally weird and spray-tanned David Hasselhoff hosts a talent show with a parade of terrible auditions, at the end of which boring E.B. wins or gets to move on or whatever. Then that plotline is promptly abandoned. And that’s it. The rest of the film’s tired gags revolve around explaining why people aren’t weirded out by a talking rabbit. (Fred is a ventriloquist. The rabbit is a robot toy. Lame pop-culture reference.)

Hop suffers from a problem that often plagues films in the live-action-with-cartoons genre—while sharing a frame, the actors can’t quite act like convincing humans, and the cartoons can’t quite be as goofy or entertaining as you want them to. Instead, we’re left with a handful of neat, colorful scenes of bunnies and candy and marshmallows, and a whole bunch of really boring ones that drag and drag and drag and give kids every opportunity to zone out.