I Got COVID And Watched A Terrible Movie
Alternate theory - it was a normal movie and my brain didn’t have enough oxygen | Pop Fly | Vol. 1 Iss. 4
Last week I got COVID. I don’t know where I got it, though the metro seems like a possibility. And what do you do when you’re exhausted and can’t go anywhere? You pull up Netflix, you turn down your personal filter for what’s a good movie, and you just watch whatever.
Which is how we come to 2008’s The House Bunny, which is honestly a real stinker and I have OPINIONS.
The “Plot” of this “Film”
The premise of the movie is that Shelley (Anna Farris) is a playboy bunny who gets kicked out of the mansion for being too old. (She’s just turned 27, and we’ll come back to this later but it turns out this a scheme perpetrated by a villain.) She wanders up to a sorority house, which reminds her of the only place that’s ever felt like home (prior to being a bunny, Shelley was an orphan in an orphanage and yes this movie takes place in 2008 not the 1930s). This first, ~cool~ sorority house rejects Shelley because she is a) not in college and b) not old and conservative enough to be their house mother. Helpfully, there is a less cool sorority full of ~losers~ about to get shut down by the university if they don’t attract enough pledges.
The sorority’s leader (president? Slightly cooler member? Most famous of the actresses they had?) Emma Stone sees the local fraternity talent ogling Shelley, who is doing yoga on the lawn (?), and decides that Shelley, as house mother, will make the sorority more attractive to boys which will in turn make it more attractive to girls, meaning more pledges and not getting shut down. Is this how sororities work? I mean, maybe? I was not in one
Let’s go back to Emma Stone though. This cast is stacked. This is post-Superband but pre-Easy A, so Emma Stone is famous but not yet an Oscar winning generational talent. The other sorority sisters are played by pre-Two Broke Girls Kat Dennings, post-American Idol but pre-Smash Katharine McPhee, Rumer Willis, Dana Goodman, right-before-the-Cheetah Girls-broke-up Kiely Williams, and Kimberly Makkouk. Like, who gave this movie permission to have this group of women all together?
And dear Anna Farris, who I mostly previously knew as being divorced from Chris Pratt, is giving a masterclass in straight-faced delivery in this movie. She is given the most ridiculous things to say, and she’s selling all of them. They put her in weird clothes, they don’t make her character’s throughline or skills clear at all, and yet she gives this lovely, really sympathetic performance that made me actually finish this weird movie.
Poor sweet Anna Farris, as Shelley, teaches the misfit sorority girls to be hot. Is there a montage where they go to a salon? Of course. Do they shoot a calendar and Katharine McPhee does sexy pregnant witch for October (“I bet the house that falls on you is gonna be a sexy house.”)? Yes and yes. A lot of Shelley’s advice is terrible, including that men don’t like smart women and that, all else failing, the girls should say to a man, and I wrote this down so it’s correct, “Your biceps are huge. Kiss me!”
But the most terrible advice occurs at a karaoke bar, where the girls are drawn into a competition against the other Greek houses, which is, and you may be surprised by this, a scheme perpetrated by a villain. The Zeta girls (the main sorority, the sad one, is Zeta Tau Alpha, but at one point the Z falls off the front of the house, leading Anna Farris to declare, with a totally straight face, “at least you still have T and A.”) are hesitant to do karaoke, even though Rumer Willis was f-ing Roxie Hart on Broadway and Katharine McPhee nearly won American Idol. Anna Farris encourages them to go ahead and do it because, and again I wrote this down, “Boys like singing. It’s sexy.”
I spent eight years in school choirs. And apologies to Anna Farris, but this is incorrect.
A bunch of other stuff happens. They have a car wash and Emma Stone sprays the hose at her own crotch in an attempt to be sexy. They throw an “Aztec party” (???) in which most of the decorations are Easter Island themed. (Though Emma Stone, who I think is supposed to be a nerd but it’s never clear what it is she’s studying at school, clarifies that the decorations are anachronistic.) Anna Farris falls in love with nepo baby Colin Hanks, who works at a nursing home, so then for philanthropy the sisters go and dance at the nursing home, but it’s too sexy and the old men, who are for some reason all hooked up to heart monitors, are simply too turned on by this dancing and it’s a danger to their health
.The Colin Hanks subplot is honestly baffling. Shelley is supposed to be just overwhelmingly attractive to men, but she is absolutely inept in her own dating life. I think there’s a cleaner version of this movie in which she tries to be someone she’s not because that’s what she thinks he wants, and then the message is that she has to be herself. But she tries being herself first, and that doesn’t work. And then she tries being someone she’s not, and that also doesn’t work, and then what does work is she pretends she’s moved to Peru with the peace corps.
Despite these inconsistencies, and despite all the terrible advice, Emma Stone’s scheme works, and Anna Farris is able to make the sorority both hot and popular. Because they’re now hot and popular, a bunch of people want to pledge Zeta, and instead of being mean the girls eventually choose their new class at random and set out to mail bids to the new pledges. (Even in 2008, this feels like a stretch of the imagination.) The paper bids are stolen in a scheme by a villain, which means the sorority is once again at risk of being shut down. However, due to a passionate speech by Anna Farris the sorority is saved.
A Scheme Perpetrated by a Villain(s)
In total I count at least three schemes and three different villains in this movie
.The head of the rival, cooler sorority changes the lyrics to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” so that the Zetas will be embarrassed at the karaoke contest. This must have taken pretty significant coordination to write the new lyrics and get them into the machine, which is interesting, since the other sorority had no idea the Zetas would even come, let alone participate in the contest.
The evil sorority president also engineers a scheme to steal the envelopes with all the Zeta bids. This one required the president’s boyfriend (? a boy, anyway) to be at the post office at the right time, which isn’t that improbable, but also might require that he and the sorority president just stake out this campus post office for hours on end.
The house mother of the cool sorority is also a villain, but instead of schemes she just has rude comments about Anna Farris.
The inciting scheme of the whole movie is by a fellow Playboy bunny, who forges the letter to Anna Farris kicking her out of the house, and forges a different letter to Hugh Hefner supposedly from Anna Farris saying she’s leaving. This scheme is assisted by the mansion’s shirtless chef, who is manipulated by this other villain bunny because she keeps twisting his nipples. (???)
The Girls Next Door
How did they show a letter being given to Hugh Hefner in the movie, you might think? Was it like when they only showed the back of the Yankees president’s head in Seinfeld? No, because Hugh Hefter is IN THIS MOVIE.
And you know what else, so are some of the Playboy bunnies of this era. How do I know that? Why, because I watched The Girls Next Door, the playboy reality show that aired from 2005 to 2009. I don’t know exactly when I would have been watching it, but I will note that in 2009 I turned 13 years old
Also, for the record, Hugh Hefner was a creep.
I Make an Unfair Assumption and Am Incorrect
This movie’s relationship to femininity and female friendship and a lot of other stuff is kind of weird, probably because the script just isn’t working, but my assumption was definitely that this must have been written and directed by men.
And it was directed by a man, like over 85% of movies. But to my surprise, it was written by women!
More than that, it was written by women who have written other, legitimately good movies. Writing partners Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah penned 10 Things I Hate About You, Legally Blonde, Ella Enchanted, and She’s the Man. This is culture!
And then they wrote this. I still think the script doesn’t really work. It probably could have been trimmed down a bit so that in my notes I wouldn’t have written “oh dear it’s only half over.” There’s a more focused but also way campier version of this movie that works. And I think that version is in there somewhere –these writers meant for parts of the movie to be ridiculous –it’s just not able to breathe in the space it’s been given.
I Took Notes During This Movie But I Also Had Covid, So They’re Iffy in Places
When she’s kicked out of the playboy mansion, Anna Farris has to give up her cat, improbably named Pouter. She then DOES NOT MENTION HER CAT for the entire movie, until they’re reunited like ten minutes from the end.
Anna Farris goes to jail at one point, I think maybe for attempting to perform oral sex on a cop (?) and when she leaves she has on a new outfit, which isn’t usually how jail works.
I don’t remember the context for this note, but “Oh wow people did just tell women they looked slutty”
When Anna Farris goes to the fancy sorority, they inform her that it’s a sorority house, not a brothel. To which hero Anna Farris replies, totally straight. “Oh a brothel? I’m not looking to make soup.”
It’s implied or maybe just said outright that the Anna Farris character had breast enhancement surgery. I guess I sort of assume this was before she became a playboy bunny, but she joined the mansion at 18 and before that she was an orphan, so I don’t really know how she would have afforded plastic surgery.
Emma Stone’s romance plot is introduced when she sees her crush running by and says “That’s Colby, I’m in love with him.” Which, I mean, at least she’s direct.
Anna Farris refers to the Colin Hanks nursing home as “like an orphanage for old people,” which is both funny and deeply sad.
They repaint the deck of the sorority house pink, but they don’t strip the previous paint/stain off first. And I’ve only painted one deck, but even I know that’s wrong.
When Anna Farris goes to volunteer at the nursing home she tells Colin Hanks, “Kindness is just love with its workboots on,” which is genuinely very sweet.
When Anna Farris and Colin Hanks go on a date, the waiter is pre-Jane the Virgin Justin Baldoni and no offense to Colin Hanks but I think there’s a clear winner here.
Don’t remember what this one was about, but it seems consistent with 2008: “Oh good gay panic”
What Else?
Writing
Covid slowed me down a bit, but I am still up to date on my October poems and my wordcount slashing. Well, slight detours to fix some plot/emotional arc stuff that may actually be adding wordcount, but we’ll get there. Hannah also has me contemplating NaNoWriMo, but we’ll see if I can get this book done before I get too far into a new one.
Watching
I finished Sex Education this week. It remained a lovely show until the end, though I agree with some of the reviews that said it took on too much for the number of episodes it had.
We’ve also been keeping up with The Great British Baking Show, which I think is getting back to its comfort watch roots. It also always makes me want to bake.
Nice review Allison!