Since Anna Faris was able to not only star in The House Bunny but also act as the producer who was the driving force behind getting the film made, you’d have to figure that she has a brain somewhere in her off-camera head.  However, as soon as she gets in front of the camera, it seems she is immediately anointed Queen of the Ditzes. 

That persona worked well for Faris in the goofball spoofs that made up the Scary Movie series, and it even served her nicely as a supporting player in the Oscar-winning Lost in Translation; but like Will Ferrell’s shtick, it is getting very old very quickly.

Still, it does make her a perfect fit for the role of Shelley, a Playboy bunny who gets thrown out of the mansion after her 27^th birthday (“that’s 59 in bunny years”) and is left homeless.  Through a string of lucky circumstances, she finds herself becoming the unlikely house mother for a sorority of socially-inept young women who find themselves needing thirty new pledges in order to keep their house.

In order to succeed, they need to quickly become what they aren’t: popular.  Fortunately, Shelley knows the secret to getting boys to like you: turn yourselves into “stupid bimbos.”  After the unbelievably rapid transition from geeky to sexy seems to be helping the sorority sisters, Shelley is having difficulties of her own when she becomes interested in the smart and kind Oliver, who is not falling for any of her tricks—like burning herself over a steam vent while trying to impersonate Marilyn Monroe.  One theory: “Maybe he’s the kind of guy who likes to have a conversation before hooking up.”  Baffling.

The film is written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kristen Smith, the writers behind the successful, pink-laced Legally Blonde;, but the ditzy Faris is no comparison to the Oscar-winning Reese Witherspoon.  To be sure, there’s a message hidden in this script somewhere about how it’s most important to just be yourself—but that message gets unfortunately lost, what with all the characters’ efforts to sex-up and dumb-down so the boys will like them. 

The film does have a few laughs, but they re more like chuckles or (more appropriate considering the film) giggles—and as tweenager movies about saving the ugly ducklings of the Greek system go, The House Bunny is far less entertaining and creative than last year’s Sydney White; but to be fair White did have a classic fairytale to start from.

One of the things The House Bunny does have going for it is a supporting cast featuring some of Hollywood’s rising young female stars.  The two most prominent members of the sorority are played by Emma Stone and Kat Dennings.  Stone—who made her film debut just last year in Superbad—is an actress I’ve already grown an affection for, but she struggles here with her comedic timing while her character awkwardly attempts to secure her crush.  She’s much better in The Rocker, also released this week.

Dennings was probably my favorite of the sorority sisters as she uses the male sex’s newfound attraction to her in order to do some research on their psyche.  Dennings has an appealing acerbic wit that has already been put to good use in The 40 Year Old Virgin and one of my favorite films this year, Charlie Bartlett.  I’m interested to see what she and Michael Cera can pull off in the upcoming Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, which may or may not be an update of The Thin Man; I can’t tell from the previews.

Even with this talented young cast, though—which also includes Katharine McPhee, who I’m told is an American Idol runner-up—director Fred Wolf can’t save this movie from feeling as ditzy as its main character.  It’s one of those films in which I leave the theater feeling that my intelligence declined a bit while I sat in the dark.

The House Bunny is rated PG-13 for “sex-related humor, partial nudity and brief strong language.”  This film has a lot of sex-related humor, both verbal and visual… and there is a brief peek of Faris’ backside. But the film knows its target audience is in the PG-13 range, keeping it all reasonable.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of The House Bunny.