The Easter egg hunt. Quaint. Innocent. In need of a major adrenaline rush. Here are just a few tips from the action movie genre to help turn any search for dyed Grade A’s in your house or backyard into the ultimate heart-pounding blockbuster adventure of the spring…
Make It Personal
What always motivates the hero in an action movie? Revenge. Revenge for a fallen partner. Revenge for a kidnapped loved one. Revenge for their revenge of your revenge in the previous action movie in the franchise, hence the use of the word “Revenge” in the title. And so you must make the Easter egg hunt all about you as well. After all, the Easter Bunny broke into YOUR house. He placed soon-to-be-stinky eggs all around YOUR furniture and outdoor shrubbery. He probably laughed at YOU while watching YOU sleep. So to get into character just keep telling yourself these things until you can utter the classic line, “This time it’s personal,” all while your worried mom watches you use her makeup for camouflage face paint and then strap on a bandolier of what is clearly Drake’s Yodel cakes.
Infiltrate the Organization
In every action movie there comes a point when the only way the hero can stop everything from coming to an end is to go where it all started—the enemy’s headquarters. And so you must as well. Of course, in this case the headquarters are your kitchen, where your parents—and most probably you, too—dyed the Easter eggs. So in order to infiltrate the operation you must don a disguise, assume an accent, and have an escape plan that most likely will involve you suddenly dropping everything and running back to your room. If your parents ignore you the whole time you’re in disguise that means either you’ve convinced them that you’re famed German egg neurophysicist Dr. Vonstraussbergsteinhoff or they figured ignoring you won’t encourage such behavior. However, if your parents won’t stop staring at you it means either they’ve realized it’s a trick or they can’t believe that’s what you think a German accent sounds like.
Keep Running Around Screaming
What makes an action film? Well, the action, naturally. Otherwise you’d just have a “film” in which the characters talk about being in love, being out of love, or being in 19th century Europe. That’s why it’s important when your folks say you can look for the eggs you don’t just walk out the door to the backyard. You leap out a window (preferably an open one). You dive off a roof (preferably from a house no taller than one story and onto a waiting pile of Aero Beds). You repeatedly dash back and forth across the backyard with a water bazooka, screaming at the top of your lungs as you eat one Yodel after another from your bandolier for that extra sugar rush. You make it as exciting, as enthralling, as edge-of-your-seat heart-racing as possible, all the while as your parents look on and realize clearly they have not found the right medication for you yet.
Feel Like All Hope Is Lost
There comes a time in an action movie when the hero realizes he is outmanned, out gunned, out of emotional and physical reserves, and clearly out of his element. That’s when he drops his weapon, drops to his knees, wipes the sweat and blood from his brow and says, “This doesn’t look good” or “I…I don’t think we can win this” or “I’m too old for this.” And so there comes a similar moment during an Easter egg hunt when you realize after six hours you’ve found only three eggs, despite the fact that you know you and the good people of PAAS dyed a full dozen. And that’s when you fall to the ground and mutter, “Maybe the dog ate them” or “Maybe eating sixteen Yodels is the reason I keep vomiting on myself” or “Maybe I am too old for Easter egg hunts. I mean, how many more years can I keep running around a backyard with a little wicker basket and bunny ears before my friends’ parents tell them to avoid me?”
Team Up With Your Rival
Just when all seems lost, just when you can’t seem to find any more eggs, just when you realize your family didn’t even wait for you to come back inside before eating dinner, then dessert, then the food they saved for you, something happens. In an action movie this is when the hero realizes he must work with his nemesis—perhaps a rival cop, maybe a troublesome government agent—if the two of them are ever going to save the day. In an Easter egg hunt this is when you pick yourself up, clean yourself off, maybe eat another Yodel or two, and then walk right over to your own nemesis and say, “I don’t like you and you don’t like me. But if we’re ever going to get out of here with a full dozen eggs, we’re going to have to put aside our mutual hatred and work as one. So what do you say?” And that’s when your little brother or sister says, “You smell like Yodel vomit.”
Blow Up Your Parents’ Backyard (With Parents’ Permission)
Yes, as the hero of your own action movie/Easter egg hunt you will prove victorious. You will save the day by finding not only all the dyed eggs but also the Cadbury eggs, the chocolate Easter bunnies, and the Easter Sunday clothes you actually hid but accidentally found again in a frenzy of searching. But in order to really make the whole thing feel like an action movie you’re going to have to blow something up. Many things, in fact. And that’s when you get the remnants of another holiday—Fourth of July—and ask your parents if you can light a bunch of fireworks inside the garden shed or under the patio deck, to which they will of course say no because they’re not lunatics. That means you’ll then have to spend the rest of the day randomly yelling “BOOM!” before your parents pull over and make you get out of the car before continuing on their way to Grandma’s house for Easter dinner.
What action movie is your Easter most like? Let me know in the comments below!
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