‘Bunny’ Review: An Off-the-Wall Indie Comedy That Celebrates the Enduring Rowdiness of Downtown Manhattan

Once upon a time, mostly in the 1980s and 90s, the downtown Manhattan indie movie was a thing. Films like Jim Jarmusch’s Permanent Vacation, Edo Bertoglio’s Downtown 81, Larry Clark’s Kids and, later on, early Safdie brothers efforts like The Pleasure of Being Robbed were gritty off-the-cuff street features made on tiny budgets, shouldered by directors looking to capture the weird and wild world below 14th Street.

But living in that part of the city soon became expensive, and more expensive, and even more expensive — to the point that many writers, artists and filmmakers were priced out of their neighborhoods. Shooting in Manhattan also became exorbitantly costly, leaving room for only well-funded TV shows like Law & Order, Billions or Succession. Even the latest NYC-set Safdie joint (directed by Josh Safdie in his first solo effort) is an epic period piece, starring Timothée Chalamet, with a budget estimated between $50-$70 million.

Still, every once and a while there’s an exception. The latest is Bunny, a freewheeling ensemble comedy set in an East Village tenement inhabited by hustlers, stoners, party girls, landlords, Wall Street bros and not one but two dead bodies.

Directed by first-timer Ben Jacobson, who also plays one of the leads, the film offers up nothing all that new under the sun, with a caper plot that’s too off-the-wall to be convincing. And yet Bunny successfully channels a downtown vibe that seems to be on the verge of extinction — one where neighbors of all types, shapes and sizes live on top of one another in cluttered apartments, forging a camaraderie that could only exist in that part of New York.

Scripted by Jacobson, co-star Mo Stark and Stefan Marolachakis in what must have been a massive cloud of cannabis vapor, the film takes place during a long summer day that flies off the rails from the start, then gets even worse as various drugs are consumed, people are murdered and the NYPD shows up to do nothing but talk about burgers and gyros.

All of this happens because of Bunny (Stark), a streetwise hipster who looks like a ripped surfer dude catapulted onto 2nd Avenue, and who serves as his building’s de facto super. The film is set on his birthday, and while Bunny spends the day helping tenants and hanging with his best bud Dino (Jacobson), he also gets into big trouble when he strangles a man who comes after him for reasons related to his job as a part-time gigolo.

Chaotic yet competently directed, the movie follows the two weedhounds as they deal with one mishap after another. They need to hide the dead man’s body and placate Bunny’s father-in-law (Tony Drazan), as well as their upstairs landlady (Linda Rong Mei Chen), who stumbles upon yet another corpse. They also have to sweet talk a pair of chatty keystone kops (Ajay Naidu, Liz Caribel Sierra) with a major case of the munchies. And let’s not forget Bunny’s wife (Liza Colby), who was banking on a threesome for her husband’s b-day present, and the neurotic Orthodox Jewish chick (Genevieve Hudson-Price) renting out one of their rooms for the day.

With so many characters doing so many things in tight spaces, Jacobson and DP Jackson Hunt (Inheritance) rely on roving widescreen Steadicam shots to capture the action, filming sequences in single uninterrupted takes whenever they can. The shenanigans are well-staged for the most part, even if the comedy is sometimes overcooked and the scenario far from believable.

But the plot is mostly a pretext to convey what a fun and crazy place the East Village used to be — and still is for holdouts like Bunny scraping by however they can. Sex and drugs seem to be as ubiquitous in the tenement as all the Citi Bikes lining the streets below. Neighbors drift from apartment to apartment, frolicking or fighting, partying more than working, as the day drags on like a high that won’t go away.

There are some genuinely funny moments — such as when another cop (Michael Abbott Jr.) refers to Bunny and Dino as “Thor and Eminem” — as well as some grating ones where it feels like the movie is just turning in circles. Bunny is ultimately more of an immersive experience than a film, allowing viewers to feel what it’s like to live in one of those dimly lit, overpacked walkups where strange odors always linger in the air and there’s no such thing as a peaceful night.

The cast is a wide-ranging mix of races, ages and total downtown characters. Alongside the younger performers, Jacobson includes cameos from elder statesmen like the writer Richard Price, whose 2008 novel Lush Life was an ode to the Lower East Side, and Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Dune), who spends the whole movie on a bed watching reruns of Kung Fu. (Tony Drazan is another cameo — his 1992 interracial drama Zebrahead is a forgotten indie that’s worth a look.)

All of these eclectic folks contribute to the rowdy, free-for-all atmosphere of a movie that’s not necessarily great, but earnestly plays its part in trying to make New York City great again.

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