Bunny Ears Lawyer/Film

Examples of Bunny Ears Lawyer in Film include:

• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is downright certifiably insane, but because he is so good at solving cases involving animals, he keeps getting hired.

• The pilots in Air America are completely insane, but really good pilots.
  • Truth In Television: the two main recruiting criteria for Air America in that era were 'Are they competent to fly the plane?' and 'Are they desperate enough to actually take this job, due to being completely unemployable anywhere else?'

• Willie Beamen in Any Given Sunday had the habit of throwing-up at least once every match. However, he's a reasonably competent quarterback that he took over as the starting QB when the previous one was injured.

• Dr. Strangelove is a brilliant former Nazi with a severe case of alien hand syndrome - his right hand gives the Seig Heil salute without his control, and takes extreme effort to force back into his lap, and occasionally attempts to strangle him. Among other things.
  • This quirk of his is so well-known that alien hand syndrome is also known as Dr. Strangelove syndrome.

• Kuryu, the main character of Japanese movie Hero (based on the TV series) is almost literally a Bunny Ears Lawyer. He constantly wears almost-aggressively casual clothes while his contemporaries wear suits, he indiscriminately buys random items from the shopping channel, and spends the whole movie trying to learn Spanish simply because he inadvertently ordered a book in that language. His quirks are overlooked however, partly because he is a cunning and successful lawyer, but mostly because his co-workers are all subtly quirky too.

• The detective in Laura always plays with a handheld maze game.

• Elle Woods in Legally Blonde is a law student who literally wears a bunny outfit to a party ^[1]. Her awesome knowledge of fashion helps her defend her clients.
  • Let's not forget, she also legitimately got into Harvard law based on her academic record and testing.
  • In Legally Blonde 2: Blonde Harder^[2], her awesome knowledge of fashion allows her to root out political shenanigans on Capitol Hill.

• Martin Riggs from the Lethal Weapon series is suicidal in the first film, and then just plain crazy after he gets over it. He deliberately plays havoc with the department's psychiatrist (and starts to make her snap), for bonus points. His near unstoppability when dealing with thugs is likely the only reason he is left on the force.

• Vinny in My Cousin Vinny is an acerbic Brooklyn stereotype with a mouth like a stevedore(being played by Joe Pesci, this is to be expected), but turns out to be a brilliant and tenacious opponent in the courtroom. Also, his girlfriend Lisa, an aspiring hairdresser who knows enough about cars that her testimony ends up proving the defendants' innocence.

• Essentially everyone in the film Real Genius, which could almost be the trope namer.

• "Roger Cobb" (Steve Martin), a lead character in All of Me. In response to a claim that "he's acting strangely", the boss replies "he's been bringing a dog to a law office for the last dozen years, and you're just noticing this now?"

• John Mason (Sean Connery) from The Rock is a good example. Despite being considered one of the most dangerous men alive, the US government is essentially ready to give him anything he wants in order to get him to work for them, as he is the only person who has ever broken out of Alcatraz and lived to tell.

• Stéphane from The Science of Sleep is completely... mad, possibly... due to his confusing dreams that keep melding with reality (that he's not entirely about to cope with). However he is a technical genius. He makes a toy horse gallop with robotic parts - rather realistically and possibly a one-second time machine. His "Disaterology" also becomes a big success.

• Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant detective, but he is also quite eccentric and drug-addled.

• Subverted in Smokin Aces. There is an eccentricly sleazy lawyer. For his first scene, there is literally a costume rabbit head showing in the background. However, he proves to be completely incompetent.

• Glen Whitman, in Transformers, is a brilliant computer hacker, who may have ADHD and exhibits extremely erratic, perhaps sociopathic behavior. Apart from a lack of basic manners and some sort of unspecified paranoia, his great passions in life appear to be video games and getting into places he does not belong. Which could honestly be said of 90% of computer hackers. Hacking is, after all, all about getting into places you don't belong.
  • We can't forget Agent Seymour Simmons, who the TF Wiki describes as "just a smidge off his nut", but who is very good at what he does. In a bizarre subversion of this trope, his Bunny Ears-ness is implied in the novel The Veiled Threat to be the reason he isn't working for NEST.

1. ↑ if only because she was told that it was a costume party, as a prank
2. ↑ not its real title