Blu-ray Review: The House Bunny - Page 2

By the end of the film, the girls of Zeta and Shelley are able to find a happy medium between smart, unattractive, and unpopular, and ditzy, attractive, and popular, but it's all rather simplistic and an odd set of choices to force the girls to make.  Additionally, it is the character of Mona who should be telling them the entire time that they don't have to dress sexy and flirt ostentatiously to be popular, but she gives in.  That fact by itself seems to make the film's entire message that feminism and attracting boys are mutually exclusive and that even the most staunch of feminists would rather have a boyfriend than stick to her ideals.  It is, at best, a very uncomfortable message to send (I don't want to enter into a discussion of what it represents at worst, but it's not pretty). 

In the face of such a criticism some will unquestionably suggest that the film isn't trying to enter into such a discussion, that the film is trying to be nothing more, or less, than a perfectly innocent (rather chaste, when one considers the Playboy Bunny aspect) film.  That may be true, but it does enter into the discussion nonetheless, and once the discussion has begun, the film's problems become all too apparent.

The Blu-ray release of The House Bunny contains an assortment of deleted scenes and several short behind-the-scenes featurettes.  The special features all appear in high definition, but never really get beyond the usual superficial promotional sort of piece.  This is particularly true when the focus of the featurettes is on the women of The Girls Next Door, a series about three Playboy Bunnies who also have bit parts in the film. 

In high definition, the comedy is bright and colorful with the copious amounts of pink really popping off the screen.  As this is a light comedy, the TrueHD 5.1 channel mix only gets a few scenes to really show itself off, including a few party scenes and some good sound effects when the door to Shelley's beater of a car has its door opened or closed. 

The House Bunny certainly looks and sounds great on Blu-ray, but unfortunately there just isn't much there beyond that.  As a comedy it is perfectly mundane, but its discussion of gender and gender relations is more than a little distressing.

Article Author: Josh Lasser

Josh Lasser, formerly known as "TV and Film Guy," and complete with a Masters Degree in Critical Studies in said areas, gives his opinions on TV, Film, and Entertainment in general. All of which he does in a shameless attempt to try to get paid to do the exact same thing. …

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