The House Bunny [12A]


Playboy Bunny helps clueless sorority girls save their house.
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The plot of this movie bears a very strong resemblance to Legally Blonde, and there’s a reason for that – it was written by the same people, Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz. This time it’s not a waspy boyfriend but the entire east coast Ivy League college system who need to be taught a lesson – the lesson being that brains are no substitute for breasts if you want to be a successful woman in today’s America.

Shelley Darlingson is a bunny enjoying the chaste and fun-loving lifestyle of the Playboy Mansion (really) when she is brutally booted out for being too old. Out on the streets in her high heels and minute spangly costumes, she somehow manages to become a house mother at a college sorority house which is about to be closed down because the girls are so plain and socially inept that no-one wants to be in it. Shelley predictably turns this around with her instant makeovers and party know-how; but alas she is less successful at developing a relationship with a real man.

It does have redeeming features – Anna Faris as Shelley is very good and very funny, so is Emma Stone and so is Katharine McPhee (who really is an excellent singer) and most of the supporting cast. It is quite amusing to spot who is related to whom – the movie also features Colin (son of Tom) Hanks, and Rumer (daughter of Bruce) Willis. It also has elements that are so weird that the Coen brothers couldn’t have written them any weirder – notably Hugh Hefner appearing as himself and the bizarre concept that the Playboy mansion exists in order to provide a carefree home for intellectually challenged sweet-natured bunny girls. It certainly has nothing to do with sex or exploitation, and in fact is presented as an extremely luxurious old people’s home.

I hope that the movie’s presentation of contemporary college life is equally inaccurate, because it was deeply scary. It isn’t in the same league as Legally Blonde, but it does have one or two funny lines – if you’ve seen the trailer then you’ve seen them, basically. There is no more to it than that.

Andrea Hopkins, 17/10/08

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