The House Bunny

"The House Bunny" is something like a mashup of Snow White and the Seven Cinderellas. Shelley, a Bunny suddenly evicted from the Playboy Mansion, takes refuge in a sorority house about to lose its Charter due to its serious lack of appeal on campus. Its female residents are social misfits, and definitely not the type the other students want to be associated with. But Shelley works her transformative magic on them, remodelling them in her own image and overnight, the formerly outcast Zetas become the belles of the ball.

Much of the humour comes from the skillful play on stereotypes as they interact with one another. These are the people we easily identify on any given college campus, the juvenile jocks, the popular girls, and the socially awkward Zetas. But they don't always conform to "type" as the Zeta girls discover once they learn to come out of their shells.

What's interesting is that from Shelley's perspective, dealing with rejection is a matter of excercising choice and knowledge as a means to overcome the temptation to succumb to circumstance.

With Shelley's help, her plain jane charges make a startling transformation with a change of clothes, hair, cosmetics and (as we observe in their "Armageddon" strut sequence) gait. It isn't that they become beautiful, but they become interesting. Everything about them in their makeover state is eye-catching: the bright colours, shapes and lines of their clothes and accessories, their hair artfully shaped with flashes of brilliant highlights, their poise which exudes confidence and control, and their smiles reflecting their positive energy and thus their welcome to others. The image makes the first impression, then they're ready for the second layer of social contact: connecting with others through conversation.

It's in this second layer that both Shelley and the Zetas are able to help each other. The Zetas learn that behaving shallow is not the same as being shallow, and Shelley learns that not all guys are attracted by sex appeal and bimbotic behaviour.

I havent caught a movie in a long while. This one was a nice, easy one to digest.