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The House Bunny
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Cert: 12A
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Dir: Fred Wolf.
Cast: Anna Faris, Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, Rumer Willis, Katharine McPhee, Colin Hanks, Monet Mazur, Beverly D'Angelo
Description: Shelley Darlington is one of the most popular residents at the Playboy mansion, winning the affections of all the other girls - everyone, that is, except jealous rival Cassandra, who schemes to get rid of Shelley so she can take her place at Hugh Hefner's side. Made to believe that Hugh no longer wants her, Shelley tearfully heads into the great unknown and lands a position as house mother to the Zeta Alpha Zeta sorority, which is threatened with closure unless it can attract 30 pledges. The current house residents are resigned to their fate but Shelley inspires the girls to pull out all the stops to ensure Zeta Alpha Zeta escapes the bulldozers.
Country: US. 2008. 97mins
Tale of a tough old rabbit
By Derek Malcolm, Evening Standard 09.10.08
Smart and sexy: Shelley (Anna Faris)
Anna Faris, who you may remember from Scary Movie, plays Shelley Darlingson, a superannuated Playboy Bunny in this Fred Wolf comedy produced by Adam Sandler. She is 28 which, she is informed, is 59 in Bunny years. She must go.
Totally out of her depth outside the Playboy mansion — which is portrayed as a brothel where sex is prohibited — she stumbles into a university campus house called Zeta Alpha Zeta which is about to be closed because it can’t attract new members.
Her job, she now opines, is to make the sorority as much like the Playboy mansion as possible, so she gives the unfortunate inmates a crash course in how to make their way in life by attracting men. Actually, Shelley is not very good at it herself. When she has dinner with Colby (Tyson Ritter), the one she fancies, she stuns him by talking on and on about her cherishable “bum”.
She eventually learns that she and the other girls have to stop pretending and be smart as well as sexy.
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Meanwhile, an aged Hugh Hefner, playing himself lugubriously, begins to pine for her, sending his bevy of scantily clad playmates away and ordering pot after pot of comforting ice-cream.
This silly comedy has a few decent jokes in its otherwise dim screenplay. However, its parody is as toothless as Hefner probably is by now and its cast, which includes Colin Hanks and Emma Stone, is reduced to flailing about in the detritus of eight-inch high heels and bra pads.
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