Friday, Aug. 29, 2008

The big screen: The House Bunny

With the success of "Legally Blonde," a slew of similar college-themed girl films have followed, most of them hardly memorable, and "The House Bunny" now playing at Premiere Cinemas, comes close to suffering the same fate.

The films salvation lies within Miss Anna Faris, the impossibly beautiful blonde playing her normal impossibly stupid character. This time she's Shelley Darlingson a Playboy bunny who has just been kicked out of the mansion with a cameo from Hugh Hefner and his three platinum blonde girlfriends. What's a skill-less pretty girl to do with herself?

The girls of Zeta Alpha Zeta, an unpopular sorority in some southern California university, are feeling helpless when it comes to boys. That's until Darlingson shows up and teaches them that hairspray, product and push up bras are the only things you need. It's hard to believe that two women wrote this movie.

The movie is a complete rip-off of all the college movies that aspire to transform a group of nerds into the school's most popular students. The sorority girls, both popular and unpopular, are a pile of stereotypes. The dumb blonde act was very obviously modeled around the now infamous Elle Woods of Legally Blonde.

Although writers Karen Lutz and Kristen Smith lack all forms of originality they do sneak in a few laughs here and there. This has a lot to do with the irresistibly funny Anna Faris, who has changed the fate of many films in the past. She was easily the only funny part about any of the Scary Movie's, gave two perfect cameo's in "Lost in Translation" and "Just Friends" and was hilarious in her first lead role in the stoner flick "Smiley Face."

This is Anna Faris' first leap into the leading role in a big budget film. She doesn't disappoint either. She has a very special quality that doesn't often come in the form of the beautiful blonde bimbo, and that's originality. Her delivery is pitch perfect. It doesn't matter how stupid the joke is when Miss Faris looks into the screen with that genuinely dumbfounded look, mouth and eyes wide open, you can't help but laugh. But you might want to wait until it hit's HBO to find out.