Anna Faris is a gifted and fearless screen comedian, and her radiant performance in “The House Bunny” raises the film above its sub-“Legally Blonde” trappings. Faris, star of the “Scary Movie” franchise, has a big, bright smile; round, impossibly expressive eyes; and a knack for making herself the butt of every joke. She’s the ’00s answer to Goldie Hawn, and “The House Bunny” proves she can anchor a big studio film.
If only it were a better big-studio film. “The House Bunny” is female empowerment for the “Girls Gone Wild” generation and, comparatively, Faris’ Shelley Darlingson makes “Legally Blonde’s” Elle Woods look like Jackie Onassis. As a Playboy Playmate (but not centerfold — it’s an important distinction) kicked out of Hugh Hefner’s mansion, Darlingson is dimwitted but extremely sweet, and comes armed with a bevy of Bunny-isms, such as “kindness is just love with its work boots on” and, somewhat less poetically, “the eyes are the nipples of the face.” The bumper sticker on her beat-up station wagon reads, “Mean People are Mean,” and that’s about as deep as her life’s philosophy gets.
After her unceremonious exodus from the Playboy Mansion on the morning after her 27th birthday, Darlingson stumbles upon a row of sorority houses on a nearby college campus. She soon becomes the house mother for the lowly Zeta Alpha Zeta house, a hapless group of misfits and outcasts (among them “Superbad’s” Emma Stone, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s” Kat Dennings and “American Idol’s” Katharine McPhee), whom she’s soon making over and clueing in to the wonders of water bras.
What she teaches them never goes much beyond the importance of sporting some rockin’ cleavage, and the best anyone can offer in her defense during the film’s Big Climatic Speech is “she’s not dumb,” evidence of which is never fully supported by the script (from “Legally Blonde” scribes Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, natch).
But Faris brings her character to full life, and she lights up the screen whenever she’s on camera. You watch “The House Bunny” for her, and her performance is a pleasant late-summer surprise. It takes a lot to bring this much presence to a ditzy blonde role, and Faris’ perky energy and go-for-broke, bull’s-eye performance is head, shoulders and exposed navel above anything else in the film.
Say this for Faris: Even though “The House Bunny” may be, she’s not — dumb.
“The House Bunny.” PG-13 for sex-related humor, partial nudity and brief strong language. 1 hour, 38 minutes. Directed by Fred Wolf; written by Karen McCullah Lutz & Kirsten Smith; photography by Shelly Johnson; starring Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, and Emma Stone. Open at area theaters.
