Blu-ray Review: The House Bunny

I must confess that I have something of a soft spot for daft, predictable popcorn comedy fare like Legally Blonde. You know exactly what is going to happen and finish up before you start watching, and don’t mind the brain enema you experience over the usually short runtime.

This is very much the case with The House Bunny, a comedy cut from the Legally Blonde mould. Anna Faris stars as Shelley, a stereotypical blonde bimbo who is a live-in resident at the Playboy Mansion. Shelley hopes to one day become a Playmate cover star for the magazine, and is one of the fortunate members of Hugh Hefner’s trusted companions (though not in the physical sense, or rather that is never hinted at here) who spends her days looking pretty and going shopping.

Then the morning after her lavish 27^th birthday party Shelley finds herself tossed out of the Mansion for being too old, and must learn to survive in the real world.
She then happens upon an open house day for local sororities and finds the Zeta house in need of some serious TLC, otherwise they are to be thrown off campus. Shelley becomes a den mother to the group, and must turn them from frumpy losers to material girls and keep them at school.

Legally Blonde was rescued thanks to the loveable airhead performance of Reese Witherspoon, and the same is true here of Faris. As well as proving to be rather spectacular eye candy, she proves that she is capable of both physical and verbal comedy (think of this as a tanned and waxed leg up from her performance in the Scary Movie franchise). It’s her sheer enthusiasm that wins through a rather dull premise here. The only thing about the movie that didn’t really work for me was her enforced relationship with Oliver (Colin Hanks), the loveable geek who just happens to land the potential Playmate.

Ultimately The House Bunny is an enjoyable, if utterly forgettable flick that ticks all the boxes for a movie of this ilk. If you found Anna Faris annoying in Scary Movie, then this probably isn’t for you. But anyone looking for an easy on the eye and mind experience could do far worse than check this out.

From a visual perspective, the House Bunny looks great. There are plenty of primary colours as you would expect, and the usual MPEG4 encode pops and shines with 1080p radiance.
Black levels are fine during the night and party scenes, and the slightly hot contrast is tweaked well so people never look too pink. Skin tones are very natural looking, and there is plenty of flesh on display here to back that opinion up.
For your average, non special effects driven Blu-ray movie it provides enough sparkle and shine to keep you amused.

On the sound front, the Dolby TrueHD soundtrack sounds just fine but this isn’t exactly going to be a gangbusters demo disc release is it? The sound is very much pushed towards the front speakers with little action happening at the rear save for a few ambient and environmental noises. Perfectly serviceable without being ultra exciting.

As for the special features the bulk of the extras are one big documentary that has been cut up into small chunks.
It’s a cut above the usual EPK interview set, featuring a lot of behind the scenes footage, interviews with the principal cast and director Fred Wolf. Anna Faris takes centre stage, naturally, especially as she is both star and producer of the show. The documentary is also presented in 1080i MPEG4 and looks very nice indeed.

There is a music video which is just the song from the end of the movie without the credits, and a number of deleted scenes that are quite amusing but are only in SD and look very rough.

The House Bunny is a fairly average chick flick which pulls itself ahead of the crowd thanks to a great performance from star Anna Faris. This Blu-ray looks great and provides the bulk of its special features in HD, which always gains bonus points from me. Bottom line, this is most likely going to be a rental unless you’re a serious Anna Faris fan.

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Category: Reviews