Big Picture Big Sound

The Film

The House Bunny is a film featuring a character developed by Anna Faris herself and produced by Adam Sandler's production company, Happy Madison. The basic premise is a Playboy Playmate celebrates her 27th birthday at the Playboy Mansion and then gets the boot from Hef the next day for being too old. Having no money of her own an nowhere to go, she happens upon a sorority house with seven pledges who are outsiders to the rest of the campus, in a word, they're "losers". In need of thirty pledges to hold on to their house and battling another "mean girl" type sorority, they employ Shelley (Anna Faris) as their house mother in the hopes she can teach them how to get boys to like them, thereby attracting more pledges so they can save their sorority.

Shelley is a typical ditzy blonde in seven-inch heels and skimpy outfits and, naturally, she must turn this sorority full of intelligent but not what one would normally consider attractive (I guess) girls into slutty airheads to get the boys to notice them. Somewhere along the way, Shelley bumps into Oliver (Colin Hanks), a guy who does volunteer work at a local nursing home for the elderly, but Oliver doesn't fall for any of Shelley's shallow tricks for picking up guys. He still, for some reason, is interested in the very much air-headed Shelley who realizes she must change in order to woo Oliver. This is all, of course, after she's already managed to turn her sorority girls into a bunch of shallow, "popular" girls.

The film is a bag of mixed messages being sent out to young women and the comedy is so thin that it only evokes a few chuckles on occasion. For instance, one running gag throughout the film is Anna Faris repeating people's names in a voice sounding like that kid from The Shining. It's supposed to be funny, but I can’t seem to figure out why. This is the kind of absurd comedy that is right up Adam Sandler's alley. It actually feels like a Sandler film, only one made specifically for women. Sadly, it's not even crazy enough to be laugahable, it's mostly boring clichés.

The Picture

Coming in with an AVC/MPEG-4 1080p/24 high definition encoding of its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1, The House Bunny proves yet again that even the worst of films can look spectacular on Blu-ray. The film's Crayola color palette of pinks, yellows, and powder blues in mostly sunny scenes is captured with a fine detail. Contrast never blooms or bleaches out detail even on the brightest of scenes and black levels are solid, although darker scenes are rare in this film. Film grain is consistent and sharp giving the film's almost unnaturally colorful look a much-needed sense of realism. The finer detail in the various lacy and multi-patterned wardrobes is rendered superbly. Every bit of stitching and texture of material can be easily picked up on. The ladies' hair and makeup is captured down to each individual sparkle of blush and strand of false eyelashes.  Due to the films hyper-realistic color saturation, flesh tones sometimes look a little weird, but there are no apparent artifacts or other post-processing misdeeds to hamper the picture.

The Sound

The House Bunny arrives on BD with three lossless audio options: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and French and Portuguese Dolby TrueHD 5.1 dubbed versions in addition to Spanish and Thai Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks.

Although well recorded and competently mixed, The House Bunny seems an odd choice of film to supply with three lossless options given the blandness of its soundmix. Ultimately, House Bunny has a typical comedy sound design. The mix is front-heavy, mostly dialogue driven with the surrounds being used for ambience. Dialogue is clear and natural, anchored to the center channel and there is not much low frequency extension to speak of other than the brief snippets of the film's musical soundtrack that employ the LFE to nicely fill out the bottom end of the sound. The most active scene in the film would be the Aztec Party at the Zeta house, where the music and sounds of partygoers fill all six channels, but still House Bunny is just a well balanced but typically dull comedy film mix.

The Extras

The House Bunny Blu-ray release is provided with an abundance of supplemental and thankfully, all but the deleted scene are in high definition.  Going through the many featurettes, it becomes patently clear that they are geared towards a female audience, as much of the time is spent focusing on the various hair, makeup and wardrobe transformations that the actresses are subjected to throughout the course of filming. There are some insights to be gleaned on the development and production of the film itself here and there, however.

The extras available on this release are:

• BD-Live -- This title is BD-Live enabled, but the material available via the BD-Live link are just promos and trailers for other Sony BD and film releases.
• Featurettes:
  • Anna Faris: House Mom (1.78:1/high definition) -- The actress discusses developing the idea for her character in the film.
  • The Girls of  Zeta (1.78:1/high definition) faturette puts the focus on the lead actresses in the film.
  • The Girls Upstairs (1.78:1/high definition) -- The real Playmates who had cameo appearances in the film are shown in brief interview segments.
  • Colin Hanks: Mr. Nice Guy (1.78:1/high definition) -- The actor and filmmakers discuss his the actor and his role in the film.
  • From Song to Set: Katharine McPhee (1.78:1/high definition) relates her experience transitioning from singer to her first acting role.
  • From Tour Bus to Trailer: Tyson Ritter (1.78:1/high definition)
  • Look Who Dropped By (1.78:1/high definition) -- This featurette spotlights some of the stars who made cameo appearances in the film's Playboy mansion sequences, including Shaq, Matt Leinert and a few Playmates.
  • House Bunny Style (1.78:1/high definition) -- This is all about the fashion of House Bunny.
  • Zetas Transformed (1.78:1/high definition) -- In this featurette, the film's lead actresses are shown going through the makeover process required to take them from "ugly ducklings" to "glamorous" sorority girls.
  • Getting Ready for a Party (1.78:1/high definition) -- The preparations for the fiom's big Zeta sorority house Aztec party, including the actresses makeup and wardrobes, set design, props, etc.
  • Calendar Girls (1.78:1/high definition) -- The actresees are shown going through the makeup and wardrobe process and ultimately doing the actual photo shoots for the film's ZETA Girls calendar.
  • House Bunny Memories (1.78:1/high definition) -- The cast members recount their fondest memories from the filming of House Bunny.
  • "I Know What Boys Like" -- The music video for Katherine McPhee's cover of the New Wave classic, with a brief introduction from the singer herself.
• Previews (high definition):
  • Blu-ray Disc is High Definition!
  • Hancock
  • You Don't Mess with the Zohan
  • This Christmas
  • Casino Royale
  • 50 First Dates
  • Made of Honor
  • Married Life
  • 21
  • Vantage Point
  • Persepolis
  • The Other Boleyn Girl
  • Center Stage: Turn it Up

Where to Buy

• The House Bunny on Blu-ray Disc (Amazon.com)

Final Thoughts

What else can possibly said about The House Bunny? It offers the occasional chuckle, and it is far from the absolute worst comedy I have ever seen (right about now, The Love Guru is coming to mind), but it's not even absurd enough to get worked up over. Sure, this Blu-ray release looks great and sounds about as good as it can with the material at hand, but this release is a weak "rent only" all the way.

Product Details

• Actors: Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, Emma Stone
• Director: Fred Wolf
• Audio/Languages: English, French, & Portuguese Dolby TrueHD 5.1, Spanish & Thai Dolby Digital 5.1
• Subtitles: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, English, English SDH,  French, Indonesian/Bahasa Indonesia, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Region: ABC (All Regions)
• Rating: PG-13
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• Blu-ray Disc Release Date: December 19, 2008
• Run Time: 97 minutes
• List Price: $39.95
• Extras:
  • Deleted Scenes
  • "The Girls Upstairs" -- Behind the scenes with the real "Girls Next Door" on set
  • "Look Who Dropped By" -- Check out the stars who dropped by on set
  • "Anna Faris: House Mom" -- A look at Anna Faris and her character "Shelley"
  • "I Know What Boys Like" -- Music video by Katharine McPhee
  • And much more!
  • BD-Live