Natalie (Emma Stone) gets life lessons from Shelley (Anna Faris).
In The House Bunny, Anna Faris gives a lesson in how to carry a movie on sheer charm and crackerjack comic timing. The Legally Blonde-esque comedy, produced by Faris from her original story concept, stars the latter-day Goldie Hawn as a Playboy Bunny who becomes homeless when she’s booted out of the Mansion and winds up as housemother and mentor to a struggling sorority house packed with socially inept beauties-in-waiting. The screenplay by Legally Blonde writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith brings in such themes as bitchery (via scheming fellow Bunny Monet Mazur), class conflict (courtesy of upper-class housemother Beverly D’Angelo and college dean Christopher McDonald), romance (by way of Colin Hanks) and authenticity (thanks to location shooting at the Mansion and appearances by Hugh Hefner, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson).
Sorority sisters Natalie (Emma Stone) and Mona (Kat Dennings) get a major makeover from Shelley (Anna Faris).
The movie resulting from all these pluses is just not particularly sexy or sharp, mostly because the good-natured script doesn’t pop and crackle with enough good lines for Faris and company. Aside from Faris, who is especially funny going way out on a comic limb—check out the peculiar way she remembers people she just met—the feel-good vibe gets a nice jolt from sorority women Emma Stone, Kat Williams, Rumer Willis and Dana Goodman. Ex-American Idol contestant Katharine McPhee plays a pregnant, flower child-type sorority beauty and, of course, gets the chance to belt out a song. In the end, though, the gifted, hilarious and foxy Faris belongs in the stratospheres and The House Bunny just sort of hops along.
credit: Melinda Sue Gordon SMPSP/©2008 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
