Where House Bunny Went Wrong: A Vapid Comedy

Everyone appreciates a good make-over montage…at least, everyone who shows up to “chick flicks” like The Princess Diaries or Miss Congeniality. But the latest of its ilk, namely The House Bunny, shames the “it’s okay to be hot” genre of women’s comedy by attempting to incorporate the recent trend of “raunch feminism.” This new strain of women’s liberation is best articulated by Ariel Levy in her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. In it, Levy criticizes those women who claim to feel empowered by going Wild on Spring Break or frequenting strip clubs with their boyfriends. Trying to make oneself over into a male fantasy, she warns, will likely make a woman feel alienated from herself, sexually and otherwise.

If there is a case for female emancipation by climbing aboard the stripper pole, The House Bunny does not make it. In this movie, a former Playboy Bunny (Anna Faris) becomes the house mother for a sorority of misfits and freaks. Unfortunately, though our heroine may argue for sisterhood and female friendship, the film itself seems to have little sympathy or affection for its one-dimensional female characters. When the newly-glamorous sorority crew decides to be “60% Shelley, 40% themselves,” it becomes clear the writers of this movie have totally missed the point: make-overs are supposed to give women the confidence to be 100% true to themselves. The whole comedy proves uncomfortable to watch, as nearly every gag is at the expense of the homely, the promiscuous, and those who manage to accomplish both. For a film that claims to promote girl power, it is only the men, as played by Colin Hanks, Christopher McDonald, and Hugh Hefner, who have brains and heart.

Those on the hunt for a “Barbie makes good” comedy would be better off renting Legally Blonde or the Charlie’s Angels comedies, all of which prove that sometimes a bikini-clad babe has more to offer than anyone guessed.

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