'The House Bunny' Review
There's a scene in The House Bunny where a key character inquires as to whether Shelley is, in fact, "that dumb." One of her fellow sorority sisters immediately stands up and says, indignantly, "She's not dumb!" This is an important scene, and my immediate assumption was that we, the audience, were meant to shake our fists at the screen and say, "Yeah!" But then I remembered that for well over an hour by that point, the movie had been scrambling frantically to get us to laugh at how genuinely and spectacularly dumb she is.This is a contradiction that permeates the entire movie, with strange results. When I saw that scene, I was immediately relieved that I had so far found the movie so completely unamusing, otherwise I would have felt guilty for laughing at this girl, who, I understand, is "not dumb."
So, in order to flaunt my superiority, I turned around in my chair and shook my fist at the drunk, cackling teenagers at the back of the theater and yelled, "Yeah! She's not dumb! See? You little punks!" Strangely, this only brought more laughter.
[caption id="attachment_8864" align="alignleft" width="340" caption="Shelley begs for a PG-13 rating."]
[/caption]The House Bunny, by the way, is PG-13, which should cause the majority of the male audience to lose interest entirely and confuse anyone over 17 as to why anyone would find such a movie interesting. The story is centered around the life of a Playboy bunny who is ousted from the Playboy mansion. Playboy's founder himself, Hugh Hefner, plays a sizable supporting role. Would one be out of line to expect a little gratuitous nudity? In this case, yes, because this is a soft porn movie for kids age 13 and up. Nice.
The story is basically Legally Blonde in a sorority house, so it's obvious that the movie's message must have something to do with superficiality and obsessions over appearance and other such nonsense.
[caption id="attachment_8866" align="alignright" width="230" caption=""Bodaciously going where no bunny has gone before. College." Incidentally, like me, Anna Faris has a degree in English Literature. Can't you tell? "]
[/caption]Shelly, played by Anna Faris, is booted out of the Playboy mansion and finds herself homeless, so she decides to shack up with a sorority of uncool girls and teach them how to turn themselves into male fantasies.
It's sad that the movie fails so completely because there is so much potential there, but, unfortunately, they just don't know where to stop with the cartoonishly overblown outcasts. These are not your typical college nerds, these are girls that don't know better than to walk up to some guys in a bar and say, "Hey, where's the crapper? I gotta drop off some timber."
Timber!!!
I feel like, in order for the comedy in a movie like this to be successful, we need to be able to point to a few characters and say, "Hey I know someone like that!" Not in this movie. You don't know anyone like anyone in this movie. But you have, however, seen people like the people in this movie.
Remember that goofy teen comedy She's All That? One of the cool kids takes a bet that he can take the ugliest, most uncool girl in school and turn her into the prom queen. So we meet little Laney Boggs, the weird art student always covered in paint and unable to get a date to save her life. Zach, the cool guy choosing to accept the mission impossible, has his work cut out for him. But -- surprise! -- she takes off her glasses and combs her hair and she's hot! What a relief that the transformation was so easy!
When we meet the girls of Zeta Alpha Zeta, they are genuinely frightening social outcasts. Bitter, confused by social interaction, and more clueless about fashion than your average homeless person, they are quite a spectacle to behold.
But, surprise! Wouldn't you know it? With the addition of the right, ahem, outfits, a little hip hop bumping in the background, and just the right amount of slow motion, they're all crazy hot! Who would have guessed?Interestingly, it isn't until the very, very end of the film that you will truly realize how purely and incredibly meaningless it is. The movie is about Shelley's efforts to turn a group of social outcasts into frat party favors, but then it tries to feed us this message about not worrying about what other people think and just being yourself. What the hell?
Beginning with the story about a Playboy bunny that just happens to be rated PG-13, everything in the movie cancels out everything else. There's a scene at the end that is meant to tie everything together and make it all make sense, but it is one of the biggest forehead slappers I've seen in recent memory.
I've noticed lately, particularly with movies like Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder, that there are a lot of new things being done in the comedy world. The House Bunny is unsurprisingly unaware of these new ideas and experiments and is merely feeding us the same childish tripe we've seen countless times before. One can only hope that, since they are now resorting to a PG-13 Playboy theme, they must surely be running out of ideas....
[caption id="attachment_8872" align="aligncenter" width="241" caption="Actual quote for the 13 and over crowd: "Eyes are the nipples of the face!""]
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