House Bunny

As a viewer about to watch House Bunny, I was skeptical. From the commercials, I assumed the movie was a girly version of the vacuous "college is awesome" (or "bro flick") genre of movies that have recently become popular. I was correct in this assessment, but I did not expect the clever and potentially self-critical execution that was House Bunny. While I enjoy the occasional guilty-pleasure chick flick or outrageous college movie, I didn't expect a whole lot out of a movie premised on a playboy bunny becoming a sorority house mom and teaching nerdy girls how to get boys' attention. But as I watched the film, I realized that this movie was not only hilarious, but also brilliant. What I missed in the previews is that House Bunny is such an extreme exaggeration of the overdone, unbelieveable plotlines in chick flicks and bro flicks that it is a poignant and ironic film.

The first clue that this movie was going to be better than expected was that it featured actresses with substantial credibility among lovers of chick flicks and bro flicks alike. Emma Stone (one of the Zeta girls) was in both Zombieland and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and before that she made her name as Jules in Superbad. Kat Dennings (another of the Zeta girls) was in 40 Year Old Virgin, and played the female lead in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist opposite Michael Cera. Anna Faris of Scary Movie fame played the House Bunny herself, and has also been in Observe and Report, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Just Friends, and a number of other films. The only other way to load this movie with more of the same sort of mainstream appeal with young people would have been to toss in Kirsten Stuart (Adventureland, Twilight). If there's any cast that's well-suited to maintain an illusion of such an absurd proportions as House Bunny and make it uproariously funny at the same time, it's this one.

The second clue was the rigidness of the movie's adherence to genre rules and simultaneous riffs on pop culture. The Playboy bunny storyline is given realism by the appearance of Hugh Hefner, Holly, Bridget, Kendra, and several other real Playboy bunnies playing themselves, as if Anna Faris's Shelley has been superimposed into an episode of the Girls Next Door. This clash of reality TV and Hollywood movies blurs the line between fantasy and reality seamlessly, as the faux-realism of reality TV breaks down the boundaries between Real Life and what's just on the screen.

The movie also played with popular narratives about sorority girls and the relationship between beauty, popularity, friendship, intelligence, dating, and "being yourself." The Phi Iota Mu girls are caricatures, robotically perfect in all ways except for an inexplicable, sociopathic cattiness. The Zeta Alpha Zeta girls are tropes, acting out the traditional storyline of the nerdy girls who get makeovers and learn the value of inner beauty. This would all make for a very formulaic movie but for the many curious moments where the characters seem to be acting in good faith according to their prescribed roles, and yet behaving in ways so unrealistic as to undermine the principles they seem to be superficially supporting. For example, when Natalie (Emma Stone) is confronted by her crush right after she's shoved a giant mouthful of hotdog in her mouth, she is behaving like someone completely unfamiliar with standard social and hygeinic standards. However, her inability to chew and swallow this bite full of food, or even to spit it out, is a far more extreme ignorance of social and hygeinic standards than even any believeable nerd character could exhibit. Likewise, when Shelley coaches Natalie that boys don't like smart girls and steers her away from him to show him that her time is in demand, she is following the standard cultural line. Yet, her advice seems a little off, even as the other characters treat it as gospel. Even those who think it's acceptable and necessary to play games in the beginning of a relationship usually tend to steer clear of explicitly saying that intelligence is a non-starter with all men and therefore an undesirable trait in all women. Shelley's advice is consequently exposed as naive, when it causes her own date to backfire.

Although this movie is ridiculous, it made me laugh and it made me think due to the adept use of irony and exaggeration throughout the movie.