The House Bunny Blu-ray offers decent video and audio, but overall it's a mediocre Blu-ray release
Shelley is living a carefree life until a rival gets her tossed out of the Playboy Mansion. With nowhere to go, fate delivers her to the sorority girls from Zeta Alpha Zeta. Unless they can sign a new pledge class, the seven socially clueless women will lose their house to the scheming girls of Phi Iota Mu. In order to accomplish their goal, they need Shelley to teach them the ways of makeup and men; at the same time, Shelley needs some of what the Zetas have - a sense of individuality. The combination leads all the girls to learn how to stop pretending and start being themselves.
For more about The House Bunny and the The House Bunny Blu-ray release, see The House Bunny Blu-ray Review published by Sir Terrence on December 27, 2008 where this Blu-ray release scored 2.5 out of 5.
I really liked Legally Blond; I thought it was really funny and well crafted movie. So when I saw The House Bunny was from the creators of that movie, I was looking forward to seeing what they had created next. I should have tempered my enthusiasm a bit, as this is no Legally Blond that is for sure. There is nothing really original in The House Bunny, as once again we are treated with a bunch of borrowed ideas from other flicks such as Legally Blond(no duh), the Nerds movies with a bit of Sorority Boys thrown in for good measure. Honestly I cannot imagine who this movie would appeal to. While the beginning would no doubt appeal to young guys (what guy wouldn't appreciate looking at a bunch of gorgeous women in next to nothing?), the remainder of the film in my opinion would be uninteresting to that same crowd. The beginning wouldn't appeal to women, but the rest of it probably would. It's not that this flick is bad, it isn't. But I walked away neither hating it, nor loving it, but feeling rather indifferent. Anne Faris is sometimes pretty funny in this movie, but as much as she tries to hold this flick together, a bad script is a bad script, and bad pacing is bad pacing. There are a lot of things thrown into this movie that do not quite make sense. The funny (or should I say weird) voice that Shelly uses to recognize names is bizarre, and really does not fit in anywhere in my opinion. The Zetas are SO nerdy, that it would take more than 97 minutes to make them hot enough to attract guys. Their transformation is based around their looks, and the other issues (like the lack of basic social skills) just seems to have been formed magically, as if their looks where the key to the lack of this skill. It's is these kinds of superficialities that stunted my suspension of belief to the point where I found myself thinking about them, but not enjoying the movie itself.
Shelly (Anne Faris) is living the life of luxury as a Playboy Bunny living in the Playboy mansion. The day after her twenty seventh birthday she wakes up to find a note from Hugh Hefner telling her to pack her things and leave the mansion. Hurt and dejected she hits the road to find a new life and ends up seeing girls who remind her of herself at their age. She follows them and finds out they live in luxury just like she used to. She tells them what she has been through, and asks if she could join their club, not knowing it is a sorority. She is rejected because she is not a student, but the girls were also uppity snobs. She notices that there are women watching over the girls, asks to be house leader, and is turned down as well. She soon runs into the young ladies of Zeta Alpha Zeta who are quite frankly totally uncool. She asks to join them, and is rejected again. However they see how she can attract guys, and easily make friends, they change their minds. She begins the work of making these girls cool, but during the process meets a guy named Oliver (Colin Hanks). As good as she is at flirting; she has to consult with the girls on how to get Oliver's attention.
As the girls become more popular, they realize they have changed too much to please others, and blame Shelly. At the same time Shelly gets a call from the Playboy mansion asking her to return, as she was set up, and they never wanted her to go in the first place. Shelly is torn between the girls, and her great lifestyle at the mansion. With the help of everyone, she decides to clean up the mess the Phi lota Mus sorority has done to the Zeta Alpha Zeta sorority.
The House Bunny hops in to the Bluray format in a bright and colorful 1080p/AVC transfer, framed in a 2:35:1 aspect ratio. The source is really clean and artifact free, with no pops, dirt or scratches. The color palette is vivid, nicely saturated, and leans to the use of bright eye popping colors. Blacks are deep, sometimes muddy, and not quite as strong as they should be. Pair that up with a contrast that is flat, and the result is images that are flat and lack depth. This film has an overall warm look to it, which slightly (and I mean slightly) skews flesh tones towards a yellow/orangish look that is not flattering. I also didn't see much detail in faces, and in some background scenes, as if they have been filtered out. Images are clean, but a bit too stylized in a way that is not particularly flattering.
Sony has thought to outfit The House Bunny with a 5.1 English Dolby TrueHD soundtrack encoded at a 24/48khz bit and sample rate. One does not expect a particularly active soundtrack on this kind of movie, and we are not disappointed. This soundtrack was so conservative; I almost forgot it was there. The mix is very front heavy, with such minimal surround usage you get no sense of location, indoors, or outdoors without the visual cues. Even the party scenes are flat and uninvolving, as the bass in the LFE sounds weak. Dialog is very clean and clear though, and since this movie is mostly dialog, the mix serves its purpose well.
The House Bunny comes to Bluray with an impressive if not entertaining batch of supplements, most in high definition. Featurettes (HD-53 minutes) is a series of featurettes broken down into a dozen pieces as follows ;
Anna Faris: House Mom
The Girls of Zeta
The Girls Upstairs
Colin Hanks: Mr. Nice Guy
From Song to Set: Katherine McPhee
From Tour Bus to Trailer: Tyson Ritter
Look Who Dropped By
House Bunny Style
Zetas Transformed
Getting Ready for a Party
Calendar Girls
House Bunny Memories Deleted Scenes (SD-12 minutes) features ten scenes that were cut from the film. Most of these scenes are quite funny, but the video is pretty bad, and still has the post production time code markers to boot. Music Video (HD) is the same clip that rolls with the credits. br>
This disc is BD-Live enabled which allows you to downloaded extra content from the studio's website.
The House Bunny is pure innocent fun. It's airheaded, lightweight, of debatable value, and pedestrian at best, and about the same at its worst. The only way I would recommend this movie to anyone, is if that person had teenagers who are into this type of film, and they do exist, or this movie would not have been made. The sound and video are basically average, the extras kind of fun, and the movie overall was also kind of fun. I just do not think any thinking person, even if they liked stupid humor would like this movie. It's too vacant for even vacant people. Rent it, see if you like it, but this cannot be a blind buy by any means.
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