Review of The House Bunny (2008) by Eve C — 31 Jan 2014

The House Bunny is a guaranteed success at Box Office because it has the sexy and funny Anna Faris in the role of a playboy bunny, as well as the fact that it involves Playboy, the popular magazine for males. But critically I couldn't guarantee anything so I figured it was worth checking out.

The main problem with The House Bunny is that so many aspects of it seem too forced.

The script isn't funny and is extremely generic and features dull language without anything that deviates far from annoying, and it is largely bereft of jokes. So The House Bunny is more reliant on physical gags, yet few of them actually prove successful, because the story is essentially just a copy of small elements of Pretty Woman, Revenge of the Nerds and Billy Madison. Unfortunately it isn't nearly as successful as any of them and is just so ridiculous. It may appeal to male crowds who can put up with nothing but attractive females for an extensive period or female crowds who can tolerate watching women turn themselves more glamourous and speaking the strange dialect they all understand like Trekkies understand Klingon. But none of this is appealing to me, because I like my comedy films to be funny. The House Bunny is not one of these cases and eventually dissolves into an example of every generic teenage comedy from the contemporary age.

Even the style of the film is forced, because a lot of scenes, particularly in the montage sequences where director Fred Wolf has ordered everything to be done in an excessively organised manner which is styled like a broadway musical and filmed like a musical sequence. It isn't good for a the credibility of The House Bunny as a film and just makes it seem all the more fake. Director Fred Wolf is a large problem in The House Bunny, because he doesn't understand much about creating an insightful or inspiring story for the female crowds that isn't excessively predictable, and he doesn't give it enough humour for the male gender to get a kick out of it. I found the sex appeal of the actors, particularly Anna Faris proved to be the only real aspect I found slightly appealing in The House Bunny. And while the cast is mostly decent, they tend to falter under Fred Wolf's inexperienced direction and don't have any good material to work with.

Anna Faris is the lone bright spot in The House Bunny, because as well as the fact that she is at her utter sexiest for the entirety of The House Bunny, she emits an innocent and ditzy comedic charm reminiscent of a young Marilyn Monroe, except in a role more befitting to the contemporary genre of teenage comedy films. By that I mean she doesn't have to force herself through the lines, she allows them to come to her automatically and she delivers them with a sweet energy. She never pushes the limits of her character and consistently keeps it within the comedic boundaries. She doesn't try to go beyond the limits of the film, she keeps it real and is the only source of the joy or laughter in the film.

Emma Stone also proves what makes her a good actress in The House Bunny, because while at the beginning her social awkwardness may be a little too much for certain viewers to bear, as she develops as a character and lets her natural talent flourish she proves that she has the talent to make it as an actress. Since shes such a success now, it's good to see her succeeding earlier on.

Rumer Willis also manages to do a good job, as does Colin Hanks.

Unfortunately, Beverly D'Angelo is hardly a nostalgic presence, because due to the excessive plastic surgery her face has been hit by over the years she has a chin which looks like the tip of a circumcised chode. Also, she isn't funny, so if anything it seems like she was cast for the sake of some ironic joke. Any charm she gave in National Lampoon's Vacation will not be found in The House Bunny, so don't waste your time attempting to search.

So The House Bunny may find success in less intelligent juveniles, but aside from Anna Faris it is far from pleasing.