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With the comical premise of a Playboy bunny thrown from the mansion, The House Bunny birthing in to life as a sorority mother is reason enough to watch this movie for its peculiar and hilarious element, but it also features a very gifted actress, Anna Faris. She has been on the verge of reaching for stars for many years and has a multitude of fantastic performances under her name like starting from the iconic Scary Movie Franchise which makes her the unwilling heroine and the slasher spoof franchise queen to oh so horrible Lost in Translation, where she had the best rendition of a Cameron Diaz styled starlet. She also makes a cameo in Entourage as a more supported actress who rips herself off to reveal jokes rather than only laughter, showing the world that they don’t need to be attractive to succeed. She wasn’t the leading lady in the underestimated Smiley Face odyssey comedy but she definitely put on the most promising and funniest performance that will be remembered for years to come. One on her best performances is without a doubt the 2007 odyssey that set a new gold standard for ‘stoner’ humor.
I’m sure that Faris will get cast for a significant role in the near future, unless the Hollywood industry really is as foolish as her character in The House Bunny. Speaking of faris, all we can do for now is be satisfied with her performance.
Until then, we will have to settle with Faris as Shelley Darlingson, an orphan who has spent her adult life as one of Heft’s favorites in the Playboy mansion. On the following morning of her 27th birthday, she is thrown out of the mansion for being “too old.” Shelley then finds herself on the streets with heels and pastel hot pants and later on as a live in house mother to the Zeta Alpha Zeta sorority girls an outpost for misfit girl who don’t have boyfriends. (They don’t wear makeup! They have piercings! Some of them are smart!) In typical grand frat movie style, the Zeta girls are at risk of losing their house charter and thus their house if pledges aren’t recruited. So Shelley, while helping Zeta girls win her help, trains them how to flirt, party like their life depends on it, and look pretty, while they assist her in capturing the heart of a nerdy campus do-gooder (Colin Hanks) by teaching her to be herself instead of the raunchy bunny.
As a feminist allegory, I can’t begin to fathom what all of this means. Similar to Grease and The Breakfast Club, The House Bunny practically states that self actualization for a woman can be achieved through lip gloss and skimpy outfits. However, unlike those films, it does not make the makeover process look enjoyable (although a mascara tutorial scene where Shelley says “Remember, the eyes are the nipples of the face” while lecturing the girls was hilarious). An unusual cast that features American Idol’s Katharine McPhee and Bruce and Demi’s daughter Rumer Willis play the Zetas, who go from stereotyped losers to stereotyped hotties at McPhee’s logic defying speed. It is rather disturbing that McPhee’s character is visibly pregnant and there is no explanation provided. However, in one scene Shelley reveals all her porn-based seduction tricks on a date and discovers that while she has grossed out her man, she has made a fool of herself, which does have real pathos.
The film can only go so far in making fun of the Playboy empire because it has his approval (Hefner cameos himself in parts of the mansion’s life). But yes, the soft porn fantasy is lost in reality, and that means something altogether in self appreciation feminism in a film such as this.
It contains stretches that are painfully absurd and lacking gags, but Faris carries the day with her overt intelligence, some unexpected deliveries, and a few graceful tumbles. It’s most random joke, and funnily, is also light: Shelley has the strange habit of speaking with a rough Exorcist like voice to remember names. Audience members get a healthy laugh the fifth time it happens. Maybe it’s because it hints at the deep reservoir of anarchic, unfeminine laughter that Faris hasn’t drawn on yet. The House Bunny tries to convince us that its message is superficial by trying to tell us that beauty truly lies in the eyes of the beholder. For the sake of my sanity, I really hope that Anna Faris’s next film tries to make the opposite point and shows off her true inner freak.
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