The House Bunny (2008)
Directed by Fred Wolf
Written by Kristen Smith, Karen McCullah Lutz
Starring Anna Faris, Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, Colin Hanks
Release Date August 22nd, 2008
Published August 21st, 2008
Anna Faris is a terrifically funny actress. Her work in the first Scary Movie and a cameo in Lost In Translation each looked like star making performances but did not pan out. Faris did terrific work in the indie horror film May but was mostly relegated to small roles in other people's lame comedy efforts (Just Friends, My Super Ex-Girlfriend).
Now with the release of The House Bunny, Faris is getting her due as a leading lady. This vain attempt to recreate the pink hued magic of Legally Blonde is desperate and straining at times but in the end Faris rises above the lameness with a terrifically funny performance.
Shelly (Faris) has long dreamed of becoming a Playboy centerfold. After appearing in a few pictorials, including Girls of the GED, Shelly moved into the Playboy mansion and waited for Hef to make her a centerfold. On her 27th birthday, Shelly was given a huge, celeb filled party but the next morning she was out on her backside.
Kicked out of the mansion for being 27, that's like 50 something in bunny years, Shelly desperately needs a home. What luck then when she stumbles onto a college campus and discovers a misfit sorority house that desperately needs a house mother. The outcasts include Natalie (Emma Stone, Superbad), Mona (Kat Dennings, Charlie Bartlett) and Harmony (Catherine McPhee, American Idol).
The misfit girls and their shabby sorority house are about to be foreclosed on unless they can attract 30 new pledges in the next month. Shelly offers to help with makeovers for the girls and giant parties to attract attention. But, when Hef calls to give Shelly her dream centerfold, Miss November, will she leave her girls behind?
The House Bunny was directed by former SNL sketch writer Fred Wolf. In his directorial debut Wolf shows a near flawless command of the cliché. Wolf nails every well worn trope of the college outsider movie, tossing in a couple of rom-com clichés as well as Colin Hanks joins the cast as Shelly's mismatched love interest.
There is nothing new, original or slightly unfamiliar about The House Bunny. Thus, all of the film's appeal hinges on the star performance of Anna Faris. Lucky for those subjected to this tripe that Faris nearly makes the film watchable. With her stunning physicality, both comedic and otherwise, and her pitch perfect delivery of even the lamest blonde jokes, Faris manages the herculean feat of dragging laughs out from under the banalities.
The House Bunny is not insidiously bad, more innocuously bad. It's not good but not so bad that I can say I hate it. Anna Faris is such a winning presence, such a sunny personality that, for a time, I thought I could actually like the film. However, by the time we reached the obligatory speech to save the sorority house, I was off somewhere else in my mind.
Whether I was remembering an episode of The Office I had just watched or deciding whether to shop for groceries or go do laundry after the movie, I don't recall. Nor do I really recall much beyond the platitudes of The House Bunny.
