Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

So I’d just come from the theater after watching ‘The Wrestler’, seriously one of the best movies I’ve ever seen and noted that that was a film without melodrama, telegraphed plot devices, crazy twists and forced humor. So the next day I just so happen to put in the DVD for this movie ‘The House Bunny’. A movie that in the backwards world of Bizarro, is just like ‘The Wrestler’. Not that I’m comparing the two because that we be just plain foolishness, but since I did see these two movies back to back it was amusing to observe the contrast. Melodrama, telegraphed plot points, crazy twists and forced humor was the order of the day for ‘The House Bunny’. Now I gotta admit it did make me laugh on more than one occasion, but that doesn’t make this thing any less messed up of a movie.

The completely adorable Anna Farris, as the character of Shelly, narrates us through this jumbled tale of how she grew up an ugly, left out and castigated orphan until one day she blossomed like a butterfly, became pretty and popular and finally found that family that she never had in Hugh Heffner and his bunnies at the Playboy Mansion, and life is good. At least until you turn 27 that is and you get a letter from Hef basically saying ‘I don’t where you’re going go, but you gotta get outta here’.

Now completely homeless and orphaned once again its time for the near brain dead Shelly to make it on her own outside The Mansion and somehow she stumbles upon the girls of Zeta House at the local U, which consists of a set of seven intelligent, independent, freethinking girls who unfortunately look like trolls and are in danger of losing their charter unless they can get thirty new pledges by the end of the movie. These smart girls need a house a mother and the consistently scantily clad Shelly needs a home and thus the stage is set for madcap hilarity.

So after spending some quality time with these girls, led by the geeky red headed Natalie (Emma Stone), and observing how they are the butt of the all the campus jokes

and routinely savagely verbally abused, particularly by the hotties of the Phi Beta house across the street, Shelly thinks she knows just how to fix them and also save the house. This would be by turning these girls into brain dead whores. Because boys like brain dead whores. Thusly, other girls observing the hordes of boys showing love to brain dead whores will want to join Zeta house, become a brain dead whore, and thereby receive much love from boys which will ultimately save Zeta House. Makes sense to me.

Well this works like a charm and now the Zetas are the hottest bitches on campus. There’s also a love interest floating around for Shelly in the philanthropic Oliver (Colin Hanks) who seems immune to Shelly’s physical gifts and just wants her for herself. The fact that herself just happens to be tall, thin, possesses long flowing blonde hair, a pair of gloriously surgically augmented boobs and apparently goes down on command is just a bonus. Anyway despite their best efforts, due to the shenanigans of the evil girls of the Phi Beta house or whatever they are called, the girls are still in trouble over here and in the process they’ve lost their true identity, and worst still they’ve cast off the one person who has showed them true love in a fit of estrogen charged rage. How in the world will they ever find a way to fix it all?

Forgive me for a moment for as I said earlier I just watched ‘The Wrestler’ and as such my brain is still in Serious Movie Mode and I wasn’t able to ratchet it back down to Stupid Movie Mode in time. But as a testament to the power of ‘The House Bunny’, by the time it was over my brain was in full bore Stupid Movie Mode and I don’t think it’s ever going to recover. But before that happened it seemed to me that message in ‘The House Bunny’ was that if you’re a woman and you want to be successful, you gotta have at least a little Brain Dead Whore in you. Now they tried to clean it up with one of those end movie speeches about how it’s ‘what you have on the inside’ that counts, but of course the woman that was delivering that speech was hot, all of the girls of Zeta are all hot now and people who want to be Zetas are hot. A bit hollow. Despite the fact that it’s true. Favor is passed upon those of us who happened to be better looking and I probably would’ve liked this movie a helluva lot more if it kept it real just like that instead of giving us trite speeches delivered by beautiful women on how ‘what you have on the inside’ is what matters most. If you’re trying to get into Heaven it does, but I’m not so sure about this earthly world of ours. I don’t think that song by the Pussycat Dolls would’ve been nearly as popular if it were titled ‘Don’t you wish your girlfriend was smart, and introspective, and free thinking and as studious as me’.