Film Title:  The House Bunny

Director:  Fred Wolf

Cast:  Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, Beverly D'Angelo, Hugh Hefner

Running Time:  98 minutes

DVD Release Date:  August 22, 2008

Reviewed By: Melanie Shim (Vancouver Correspondent - Canada)

Movies about the popularity hierarchy never work very well in a post-secondary setting; when you start going to college or university, nobody cares if you were smart or vapid, friendly or friendless in years past.  An air of indifference hangs within the confines of these post-secondary institutions and students could really care less if the girl sitting in the next desk has cheap Jimmy Choo imitation shoes.  So, the premise of The House Bunny should not work; a sorority sanctuary for losers is being ousted by the more popular house because the outcasts are basically social pariah.  But, the movie holds its own with a weak plot, and despite a very clichéd narrative, The House Bunny still amuses me and tries not to be more than what it is.           

Anna Faris stars as Shelley Darlingson, the "house bunny" of the title; she is a 26 (soon to be a 27) year old Playboy bunny living at the mansion.  Loved by all and one of Hef's favourite bunnies, Shelley continues to live her fantasy life with a family and a home.  Then, she receives some startling news: she is too old to be a bunny and is being kicked out of the mansion.  With no other family or friends to turn to, Shelley unintentionally stumbles on a sorority house being threatened to close down due to an extreme lack of pledges.  But with Shelley as their house mother, the social lepers of the Zeta house are transformed into beautiful girls, inside and out.

My love for cheesy movies abounds with no end, and The House Bunny surely did not disappoint, in the right and wrong ways.  Faris, from the Scary Movie franchise charmed me from the moment she appeared on the screen; her combination of an Elle Woods-like personality and doe-eyed naivety really captures the character well and makes her endearing, granted her academic inexperience.  Two other rising stars are Emma Stone and Kat Dennings.  Stone is adorable as the appointed leader of the house, while Dennings is hilariously dry as the token cynic.  And Beverly D'Angelo appears as another snooty house mother!  I was just in the Vegas and appreciated the coincidence.  But, the real reason I actually wanted to see the movie was Colin Hanks.  Equal parts of sweet, funny and charming, Hanks did not have enough screen time (see: Orange County for a more in depth look at his leading man skills).  He also possesses the same boy-next-door allure that is similar to his father's, but makes it very much his own.  As an aside, Tyson Ritter (lead singer for The All American Rejects), the lead singer to one of my favourite guilty pleasures shows off his (pretty average) acting chops and I'm surprised they didn't make him the lead singer of some fictional band in the movie.

My one complaint is that there are some very awkward moments in the movie that was caused by the actors and their abilities - or lack thereof - rather than the actual script.  The budget must either have been cheap or blown on Hef's brief cameo appearance because some of the acting is pretty atrocious.  Sometimes it was very painful to hear and see these aspiring thespians act because parts of the movie felt improvised by amateurs who really did not know what they were doing.           

At the end of the movie, I concluded that I did, in fact, enjoy myself for the last hour and a half.  The House Bunny is clichéd, a little campy, but a whole lot of fun.  I did laugh a lot more than I thought I would and Colin Hanks more than made up for the lack of cohesion and glue within the plot.  Though the movie is quite shallow and tries to touch on deeper issues of family and home, it still does not try to be anything more than what is presented - and that, I can enjoy.