I don’t know why I continue to beat up on The House Bunny in the comic. I saw it on Saturday with Cami and my sister-in-law and it’s a perfectly serviceable film. There’s nothing new about the plot, though. It’s basically Revenge of The Nerds with hot pants. Frankly, one wonders if you couldn’t accuse screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith of self-plagiarism. The two wrote Legally Blonde back in 2001 and The House Bunny shares a similar feel. The major difference being that Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods was actually a very intelligent and driven young woman with a fluff exterior. Anna Faris as Shelley Darlingson is a dyed-in-the-wool moron that ends up being more heart than brains.

Both seem to have an affinity for naming their pets cutesy names. "Bruiser" for Woods’s chihuahua in Legally Blonde. “Pooter” for Darlingson’s cat in The House Bunny.

The other big difference, of course is that Legally Blonde is the far superior movie. At least it had a plot that kind of makes sense. The House Bunny is all over the place and edited terribly. There are huge logic gaps in the film, sacrificed, I suppose to make room for “The Positive Message” at the end of it.

I kind of left the theater wondering who this movie was supposed to be for. Was it meant for geeky girls to teach them how to embrace their inner sexpot? Or was it for vapid, materialistic hard-bodies to teach them how to crack open a book every once in a while.

The movie leaves you hanging on a string for most of the second act. After the geeky girls of the Zeta house get their makeover, they become superficial snobs, no better than their adversaries– and you wonder “Oh my God. Is the movie going to leave them like this? Could these characters realistically abandon a lifetime of social awkwardness and rebellion after one application of lip gloss?”

As clumsy as the movie is when it finally comes around to delivering it’s message, the girls would have been better off left as bubbleheads.

I wanted to like The House Bunny more than I did and I think a lot of that is based on the strength of the performances between Farris and Emma Stone. Faris has created a great screen ditzoid, you just wish she had a better script to do it in. Emma Stone is completely natural as the over-compensating geek. She speaks and you cringe, but for a good reason – because her acting nails that awkwardness so perfectly.

Maybe The House Bunny is a better movie than I give it credit for because I’ve actually been giving it a lot of thought over the last couple of days. There are quotable lines from the movie and a few strong laughs. But it feels like it was assembled so hastily, it’s like a missed opportunity for Farris and Stone.

I have more to say about the film, especially regarding some of the supporting performances. Specifically, Kat Dennings, who I think was woefully miscast. I’m sure it’s something we’ll be talking about in greater detail tonight on The Triple Feature podcast at 9PM CST over at TalkShoe. If you’re interested, please tune in and contribute to the conversation. We’d love to have you!

See you then!