The story of the ugly duckling that eventually becomes a beautiful swan is one that Hollywood tells over and over again with varying results. As such stories go, the recent Anna Faris comedy, The House Bunny, falls somewhere short of satisfying, but not in the complete disaster range. As a social commentary the film is far closer to disaster.
In the film, Faris plays Shelley Darlingson, a Playboy Bunny who has never made Playmate of the Month. Following Shelley's 27th birthday (which is 59, we're told, in "Bunny years"), she is summarily dismissed from the Playboy Mansion. Somehow, someway she manages to find herself at a local college and gets hired as a housemother for a down-and-out sorority.
On their last legs, the girls of Zeta Alpha Zeta are sorority misfits. They are led by Natalie (Emma Stone), and while they all seem to like the notion of service and helping the community, they subscribe to none of the other common sorority tropes. Enter Shelley, who teaches them all about dressing sexier, wearing makeup, attracting boys - the sort of frivolities one would expect from a Playboy Bunny.
Part Revenge of the Nerds, part Can't Buy Me Love, part umpteen other films you've seen before, The House Bunny offers little, if anything, new and different. It's not a bad film for being an amalgam of several others, but it certainly does fail to stand out.
Faris is funny as Shelley, but even after her final transformation in which she allegedly has grown into a new, different, better person does the audience really get the sense that anything is different about her. There is never really any sort of doubt in the audience's mind that she will end up with Colin Hanks' affable, boring, love-interest character, Oliver.
Of course, what is most concerning about the film is not its predictability; not it's been-there, done-that sensibility; not even its inability to create any single new joke. No, what's most concerning about the film is its incredibly negative stereotype of women. Natalie, Harmony (Katharine McPhee), Mona (Kat Dennings), and Joanne (Rumer Willis) are all at least initially hesitant of Shelley giving them a makeover, but they soon give in and turn off their brains with reckless abandon. Mona, the most hesitant, headstrong, and feminist of the girls, give in just like the rest. She seems utterly thrilled with the notion that boys might talk to her (despite her pretending to be above such things).
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