Farris' 'Bunny' is so money!
Mark Trammell, Spectrum Editor
Published On: 08/25/2008
“The House Bunny” is one of those movies with a concept so clever you can’t imagine why anyone didn’t think of it before now. What happens when a Playboy Bunny past her expiration date (read: on the verge of turning thirty) gets tossed out into the real world? How would she cope? What would she do? How would her dubious acquired “skills” come in handy in the “real” world? As it turns out, the concept was, in fact, star Anna Faris’ idea, who successfully pitched the idea to Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison production company. (Faris previously starred in another Madison production, the Rob Schneider vehicle “The Hot Chick” in 2002.) The project got the go-ahead, and Karen Lutz and Kirsten Smith, the team behind such female-friendly hits as “Legally Blonde,” “Ella Enchanted,” and “She’s the Man” were commissioned to write the script, with former “SNL” scribe Fred Wolf (“Strange Wilderness”) hired to direct.
The end result is a surprisingly durable comedy with some genuinely funny moments, if an overall predictable outcome. When a scheming would-be Playmate (Monet Mazur) suspects Playboy Bunny Shelly Darlingson (Faris) is next in line to become an “official” Playmate- apparently there is a hierarchy to such things- she fakes a letter from the man himself, Hugh Hefner, saying that Shelly needs to be gone by the time he gets back from his Vegas vacay with the Girls Next Door. (She also leaves a fake letter from Shelly to Hef, suggesting that Shelley has gone off to do charity work to cover her bases.) Hefner and the Girls Next Door- Holly Madison, Kendra Wilkinson, and Bridget Marquardt, respectively- all play themselves, and several scenes were shot at the Playboy Mansion itself, despite the gentle prodding Playboy receives in the film. Interestingly, just as the film was about to be released, news broke that Kendra was about to leave the confines of the Mansion to try and make a name for herself via her own reality show: talk about life imitating art!
With little life experience at her disposal and next-to-no real talent, save the knack for dressing cute, applying makeup and flirting successfully with boys, it isn’t long before poor Shelly is out on the streets, living out of her old station wagon, her sparkly pink sports car having been repossessed by Playboy Inc. After spying on some cute girls of her ilk, she follows them to a nearby sorority, where she is promptly informed she must be a student at the university to join- and is too old besides. Ouch! Instead, she opts to try and become a House Mother, but discovers that all the positions are filled, save one: the hapless Zetas, the dorkiest girls on campus, who are also in danger of losing their house. Faster than you can say “make-over montage,” Shelly has whipped the girls into shape, showing them all the tools of her former trade. Meanwhile, another schemer, Ashley (Sarah Wright, of “Seventh Heaven”), the head of another sorority house, tries her best to thwart the girls from achieving their goal at every turn, with an assist from her house mother, Mrs. Hagstrom (Beverly D’Angelo, the mom in all the “Vacation” movies). There’s also a boy, Oliver (Colin Hanks, son of Tom, of “Orange County”), who seems immune to Shelly’s charms, despite her best efforts to better herself intellectually. Will the sorority girls get their charter renewed? Will Ashley and Mrs. Hagstrom get theirs? Will Shelly get her man and work things out with Hef and get her rightful Playmate status? Does a bunny poop in the woods?
Okay, so you may see the ending coming a mile away, but that doesn’t stop the film from being tremendously entertaining while it lasts. Some films’ charms are immune to such things, especially with the always likeable Anna Faris onboard. Faris has excelled as both a durable character actress in serious movies like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Lost in Translation” and as the best thing in so-so movies like “Just Friends” and “Waiting.” However, her true forte is as a go-for-broke comedienne, notably in the fun-but-erratic “Scary Movie” series, which made her a star- and in which she was easily the best thing on screen at any given moment. It’s a kick to see her playing against type as a buxom (thanks to convincing special effects) blonde trollop, with a bigger bust-line than brain capacity. Check out her deft line readings of such doozies, as when Oliver asks who she’s voting for and she says, completely straight-faced: “I definitely won’t listen to what Simon says, he is just so mean. I usually always agree with Paula and Randy.” Or her convincingly clueless misuse- not to mention mispronunciation- of words like “philanthropy.” Faris is clearly in on the joke, and yet she never simply makes Shelly a bimbo. She instead goes for something much more ambitious, a fully-realized woman who just wants to be liked for who she is and what she looks like. That she manages to do while poking fun at herself- that is, at Anna, not Shelly, who’s as far away from a Playboy Bunny type as they come- is a testament to her talent as Hollywood’s reigning go-to funny-hot-girl, with apologies to Cameron Diaz. What sells the movie to women and men alike is her self-deprecating attitude, which also manages to save her character from being a simple stereotype as well.
The supporting cast is pretty talented in their own right, though, as tends to be the case in films with large ensembles, certain characters are more fully realized than others. Coming off the best is Emma Stone, who’s having a good year, what with “The Rocker” opening the same day as “The House Bunny.” She plays the hopelessly dorky Natalie, a hottie-in-hiding that slowly comes out of her shell over the course of the film, without completely compromising her true self. Indeed, the main point of the film seems to be that it is fully possible to be smart and hot, no matter what your body type (one of the heftier girls has the most radical transformation) or dysfunction (another, played by Bruce Willis/Demi Moore offspring Rumer, has an addiction to her back brace, despite having not needed it for years). Which is actually a pretty good message, when you get down to it. Why shouldn’t girls be able to be true to themselves and still look good doing it, without spitting in the face of feminism in the process? That the film manages to find a middle ground between the two is a testament to the writers and Farris, who wanted to make sure the humor was fair but not necessarily mean, which tends to be the case with many films of this type. This “Bunny” it seems, actually has unexpected bite.
