The House Bunny

Entertainment Value:    Technical Quality:

Dumb but ridiculously fun bunny.

Review

In terms of contemporary identity politics, feminism gets sold out, tarted up, and sugar-coated for mass consumption. Entrenched in the assembly line plot of black swan “losers” confronting big meanies to save their sorority home – and naturally becoming transformed in the process – “The House Bunny” offers a watered down grrl power message that boils down to praising smarts, but only when packaged in supermodel hotness. This is the conformity of fashion magazines and pop culture: it’s okay to be yourself…provided that you look good doing it and do it for boys too stupid and shallow, but ruggedly handsome, to appreciate women of substance.

The misfits of Zeta Alpha Zeta, of course, are no mere misfits, but extreme eccentrics. From the girl so shy she texts her roommates from inside a closet to the de facto leader modeled after the prototypical nerd, the girls are characters cartoons just waiting for a skimpily dressed Anna Faris to come to the rescue. And come to the rescue Faris does, as nefarious scheming sees the titular house bunny, Shelley, kicked out of the heavenly Playboy mansion, and chance sees her in the unlikely role of house mother to a bottom-of-the-barrel sorority. That ink stain on the hand is more than deja-vu; it’s the mark of carbon-copying. There are some traces of “Legally Blonde,” which comes as no surprise since “The House Bunny” was written by the same screenwriters, Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, but the sweetness and heart that made “Legally Blonde” a genuine upending of Carl Jung’s forgotten archetype, the dumb-but-golden-hearted blonde, is non-existent in this vapid comedy. There could have been a subversive – relative to mainstream Puritannical attitudes towards sex - quality to the idea of a woman of a woman posing nude for Playboy as a means of self-empowerment, but the film ultimately indulges shallow clichés.

Yet, someone help me, “The House Bunny” does succeed at what it sets out to do: get laughs. The movie is funny, often hilarious, ranging from the purely silly and the slapstick to the hide-your-head-behind-a-pillow-because-you-can’t-believe-the-character-just-did-that. There’s enough to make the gags work without devolving the film into a spoof, and Hugh Hefner, playing himself, may be stunt casting, but he gets some of the film’s funniest scenes.

What we have in “The House Bunny” is a piece of candy, the quintessential Hollywood product as ridiculously entertaining as it is wholly disposable. No worries, though. Hollywood has an excellent recycling program.

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Columbia Pictures presents a film Directed by Fred Wolf. Written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith. 97 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sex-related humor, partial nudity and brief strong language)

Shelly: Anna Faris
Oliver: Colin Hanks
Emma Stone: Natalie
Kat Dennings: Mona