The House Bunny is a 2008 romantic comedy film written by Legally Blonde screenwriters Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz. The film had its U.S. release on August 22, 2008 and stars Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, Emma Stone, Katharine McPhee, Rumer Willis and Kat Dennings. It is the second film that Fred Wolf has directed. Adam Sandler's production company Happy Madison, will produce this film, with the distribution by the Sony Pictures Entertainment. Anna Faris was expressed the idea to a few companies, and Happy Madison was the one to have picked it up, making it the first female dominated film by Happy Madison. Anna Faris was also produceing the film. The working title of the film was I Know What Boys Like. The film is rated PG-13 for sexual humor, partial nudity, and strong language.
OVERVIEW:
Director: Fred Wolf
Writers : Karen McCullah Lutz (written by) & Kirsten Smith (written by)
Release Date: 22 August 2008 (USA)
Genre: Comedy
Starring: Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, Emma Stone, Katharine McPhee, Rumer Willis .......Plot: When Shelly, a Playboy bunny, is tossed out of the mansion, she has nowhere to go until she falls in with the sorority girls from Zeta Alpha Zeta. The members of the sorority - who also have got to be the seven most socially clueless women on the planet - are about to lose their house. They need a dose of what only the eternally bubbly Shelley can provide... but they will each learn on their own to stop pretending to be what others want them to be and start being themselves......
Review:What happens when a woman (Anna Faris) who has never known any life outside of the Playboy Mansion suddenly has to deal with the outside world? GEE, I dunno, she turns to hooking? She goes to college to become a neurosurgeon? Of course not, silly! She becomes House Mother to a sorority of misfit lesbian-ish monster girls who are really diamonds in the rough, of course! This one-joke fish out of water plot may sound familiar because it's been done so many times it stuns with its derivative chutzpah. Splash, Revenge of the Nerds, and Meatballs all come to mind.
Re-treaded plots are not always a bad thing, of course, when executed with at least a modicum of technical ability or style. Unfortunately, from the very first cringe-inducing uttereance of a scripted line onscreen by some dude, (who HAS to be a friend of the directors, I hope) you can tell that this film is simply not going to pan out.
None of this is lead Anna Faris' fault. She is a talented comedic actress, and if it weren't for her and her co-star Emma Stone this review would have consisted of two words: "1.Sh*t 2.Sandwich" and I would have left it at that.
Faris does what she can with what she'd given, and at times she even makes you forget how bad The House Bunny is. She's got a fantastic sense of the absurd: whether remembering people's names by repeating them back like the exorcist, or trying to get gum out of her hair in a protracted clumsy dance in a crowded restaurant, she carries it off with incredible innocence and subtlety. Alas the dead weight of the meandering, unfunny script, and brain dead direction is too great for her to carry by herself. She has a great career in front of her if The House Bunny doesn't stop it cold.
Emma Stone (Jonah Hill's slyly intelligent love interest from Superbad) also goes above and beyond as Natalie, the overly enthusiastic and truly nerdy leader of the misfit sorority. Her character verges on the irritating, which reminds us why these girls are outcasts. Perhaps this is the only aspect of the film that approaches realism.
The rest of the cast is rounded out with non-actors (Hugh Hefner) who torture us with their line delivery, and pros like Colin Hanks (Thankfully NOT playing a college student) and Beverly D'Angelo, who frankly phone it in.
Director Fred Wolfe, with only Strange Wilderness under his belt as a director, and Black SheepJoe Dirt as a writer, clearly holds the belief, common in SNL circles, that bad acting is somehow funny. It's not. It's not ironic, it's not silly, it's not mildly amusing: It's BAD. and
Writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith of Legally Blonde fame clearly needed work, and ripped themselves off by re-treading the "Dumb Blonde Out of Water" plot-line. This time, however, given the weird sexploitation Playboy Mansion/sorority war subplots, the dumb blonde stuff comes off as offensive. Is the intended audience young dudes who can check out Ms. Faris' ass or young women who need "makeup tips"? Either concept induces nausea.
There are many ways in which a terrible film reaches the screen. Sometimes a great script comes along, the studio gets its hands on it, and through the process of "development" gets watered down, adjusted, and all around eff'd with until a bland piece of trash limps onto the screen. Sometimes, a talentless hack who's had maybe one lucky success believes that he/she can do no wrong and keeps creating garbage that people go see just because of the one lucky success, and somehow keeps getting money to produce more garbage. People who don't know any better praise it for fear of looking stupid for supporting him/her in the first place. Usually, though, a mediocre idea gets seized on by a mediocre executive who hires all his mediocre friends to produce something that is less than the sum of it's parts...
Yes, thats what probably produced The House Bunny, because boy does it stink
on ice.
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