The House Bunny | |
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Directed by | Fred Wolf |
Written by | |
Produced by | |
Starring |
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Cinematography | Shelly Johnson |
Edited by | Debra Chiate |
Music by | Waddy Wachtel |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Sony Pictures Releasing |
Release date |
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Running time | 97 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $25 million [1] |
Box office | $70.4 million [2] |
The House Bunny is a 2008 American comedy film directed by Fred Wolf, written by the writing team of Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, and produced by Adam Sandler, Jack Giarraputo, Anna Faris, Allen Covert, and Heather Parry. The film stars Faris, Colin Hanks, and Emma Stone, and tells the story of a former Playboy bunny who signs up to be the "house mother" of an unpopular university sorority after finding out she must leave the Playboy Mansion.
Produced by Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions in association with Alta Loma Entertainment and Relativity Media, The House Bunny was released in the United States on August 22, 2008, by Columbia Pictures. It received mixed reviews, but was a box office success, making $70.4 million on a $25 million budget. [2] The film and its soundtrack have gained a cult following. [3] [4]
Shelley Darlingson is an aspiring Playboy Playmate living the life of luxury in the Playboy Mansion with Hugh Hefner. The day after her 27th birthday, she awakes to find a note, seemingly from Hefner, asking her to pack up and leave. The note is later revealed to be a forgery by jealous rival Playmate Cassandra.
Shelley happens to stumble upon a group of girls who remind her of herself: beautiful and fun. She follows them and sees that they live in luxury too. They turn out to be the Phi Iota Mu sorority, and though she is unable to join them because she is not a student, she tries to become a house mother, but the house mothers snobbishly reject her when she tries to join them.
Shelley makes her way down to the Zeta Alpha Zeta house, which appears to be far less luxurious than Phi Iota Mu. The members of the Zeta house are dowdy, socially awkward, and caught off guard by Shelley's bubbly nature, prompting them to initially reject her. Once they see Shelley's ability to attract boys, the Zetas change their mind and take in Shelley as their new "house mother", hoping she can save them: their sorority is in danger of being shut down unless it can get 30 new pledges to join.
During her time with the Zetas, Shelley meets and becomes attracted to an intellectual, altruistic guy named Oliver, who works at a retirement home. Shelley goes on a date with him. She uses seductive tactics that work with other guys, but they fail because Oliver actually wants to get to know Shelley rather than just hook up with her. To impress Oliver on their second date, Shelley starts attending classes and reading books, and tones down her appearance. The second date is also a disaster because she wears glasses that are not meant for her, and brings along notecards to help her sound smart.
Having gotten a makeover and lessons on how to attract guys and be popular, the Zetas throw a party, which is a huge success. Later, the Zetas are reviewing the girls who are hoping to pledge to Zeta. Lilly, a British Zeta sister with social anxiety, says their new popularity has made them conceited and forget the true value of sisterhood. When they realize what they have become, they blame Shelley—just as she returns from her unsuccessful date.
Although Shelley had just been invited back to the Playboy Mansion after Hefner had learned of the forged dismissal and decided to stay with the Zetas, the unexpected attack from them makes her reconsider and she calls back to accept the invitation. The Zetas then feel guilty and decide to give themselves a second makeover, this time being "Half-Shelley and Half-Themselves". They also decide to draw the pledges out at random instead of judging them for their looks and popularity. They show up at Shelley's photo shoot and ask for her to come back, to which she agrees, having changed her mind about her dream of being a centerfold.
Phi Iota Mu intercepts the invitations and prevents them from being mailed out, so the Zetas are again in danger of being shut down at the campus meeting of the Panhellenic Council. Shelley crashes the meeting and gives a heartfelt speech about what her experience with the Zetas has taught her about love and acceptance and asks for pledges on the spot; gradually 30 students agree to pledge, and the sorority is saved. Oliver and Shelley reconcile, and Shelley explains that she likes Oliver a lot and was trying too hard to impress him. They decide to start over with their relationship and Oliver is looking forward to getting to know the "real" Shelley.
The film ends with the Zetas and their new pledges celebrating. Shelley has remained in close contact with Hefner and her friends at the Playboy Mansion.
Cameos
Anna Faris originally pitched the idea of a Playboy bunny kicked out of the mansion to screenwriters Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith. In Faris' initial pitch, the story had a darker tone and revolved around a Playboy model returning to the midwest and falling into drugs. A few months later, the screenwriters combined it with an idea they'd had about a mismatched sorority house and house mother. [5] The line "eyes are the nipples of the face" is, to the writers, "one of our proudest accomplishments, which really shows you how weird our job is." [5]
The trio eventually landed a meeting with Adam Sandler's company, Happy Madison Productions, when a producer got wind of their idea. [6] Sandler, who had previously worked with Faris on The Hot Chick , liked the story and signed on to develop the film, making it the first female-driven movie produced by his company. [7] The working title of the film was I Know What Boys Like. [8]
The film was shot over the summer of 2007. [8] Faris had a nude scene originally meant to be filmed with a body double, but she decided to do the scene herself. [9]
On Rotten Tomatoes The House Bunny has an approval rating of 43% based on 125 reviews, with an average rating of 5.10/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Anna Faris is game, but she can't salvage this middling, formulaic comedy." [10] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 55 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [11] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. [12]
Variety 's John Anderson stated the film is a "Blissfully broad comedy that should catapult Anna Faris into a singular kind of stardom." [13] Nathan Lee of The New York Times wrote the film "puts a cheerful spin on its many clichés", and "this particular wheel hasn’t been reinvented, but at least it gets a nice fresh coat of bubblegum-pink paint and a star to pilot it with aplomb." [14]
On August 22, 2008, The House Bunny was released in the US. It debuted at #1 on its first day of release making $5.91 million, but ultimately landed in second place for its opening weekend, making $14.53 million, [15] behind Ben Stiller's action-comedy film Tropic Thunder , which made $16.2 million. The film grossed $70 million worldwide ($48 million in North America and $22 million internationally). [2] The film debuted in the UK chart at #1 grossing almost $1 million in its first weekend.
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 19, 2008. [16] It was also released in a 6-movie collection called The Laugh Out Loud Collection with other Happy Madison films in 2013.
Though a soundtrack was not released, a single was released to iTunes on July 16, 2008. [17] The single was a cover of The Waitresses song, "I Know What Boys Like" (produced by Chad Hugo of The Neptunes) as performed by Katharine McPhee (featuring Kat Dennings, Emma Stone, and Rumer Willis) and including lyrics about the Zeta sisters. The trailers for the film included the songs "U + Ur Hand" by P!nk and "Do It Well" by Jennifer Lopez. The film also featured songs by artists including:
Hugh Marston Hefner was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles.
Playboy is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother.
Anna Kay Faris is an American actress, podcaster, comedienne and singer. She rose to prominence for her work in comedic roles, particularly the lead part of Cindy Campbell in the Scary Movie film series (2000–2006).
The Playboy Mansion, also known as the Playboy Mansion West, is the former home of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, who lived there from 1971 until his death in 2017. Barbi Benton convinced Hefner to buy the home located in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California, near Beverly Hills. From the 1970s onward, the mansion became the location of lavish parties held by Hefner which were often attended by celebrities and socialites. It is currently owned by Daren Metropoulos, the son of billionaire investor Dean Metropoulos, and is used for corporate activities. It also serves as a location for television production, magazine photography, charitable events, and civic functions.
Delta Zeta is an international college sorority founded on October 24, 1902, at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Phi Mu (ΦΜ) is the second oldest female fraternal organization established in the United States.
Lindsey Eve (Vuolo) Handrinos is an American glamor model and actress best known for her appearance in Playboy as the November 2001 Playmate of the Month. She has appeared in a number of Playboy Special Editions, and in Playboy videos. She also appeared on TV shows such as The Girls Next Door and The Celebrity Apprentice.
Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. (ΖΦΒ) is a historically African American sorority. In 1920, five women from Howard University envisioned a sorority that would raise the consciousness of their people, encourage the highest standards of scholastic achievement, and foster a greater sense of unity among its members. These women believed that sorority elitism and socializing overshadowed the real mission for progressive organizations. Since its founding Zeta Phi Beta has historically focused on addressing social causes.
Barbi Benton is an American retired model, actress, television personality, and singer. She appeared in Playboy magazine, as a regular on the comedy series Hee Haw, and recorded several moderately successful albums in the 1970s. After the birth of her first child in 1986, Benton retired from show business.
Holly Madison is an American television personality, best known as a former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner and for her appearance in the reality television show The Girls Next Door. She also starred in her own reality series, Holly's World, which ran from 2009 to 2011. She has released two books, Down the Rabbit Hole in 2015, about her life in the Playboy Mansion and her relationship with Hefner, and The Vegas Diaries: Romance, Rolling the Dice, and the Road to Reinvention in 2016.
The Girls Next Door is a reality television series which focuses on the lives of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends who live with him at the Playboy Mansion. The series was created by executive producer Kevin Burns and Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine. The series premiered on the E! cable network on August 7, 2005 and ran for 6 seasons. The first five seasons centered around then-girlfriends, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson. The sixth and final season premiered on October 11, 2009 and introduced Hefner's new girlfriends, Crystal Harris, who eventually went on to marry Hefner, and twins Kristina and Karissa Shannon.
Bridget Marquardt is an American television personality known for her role in the reality TV series The Girls Next Door, which depicted her life as one of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's girlfriends. Although not a Playboy Playmate, Marquardt has appeared in nude pictorials with her Girls Next Door co-stars and fellow Hefner girlfriends Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson.
Alpha Phi International Women's Fraternity is an international sorority with 175 active chapters and over 270,000 initiated members.
While most of the traditional women's fraternities or sororities were founded decades before the start of the 20th century, the first ever specifically Christian-themed Greek Letter Organization formed was the Kappa Phi Club, founded in Kansas in 1916. Kappa Phi was a women's sisterhood that developed out of a bible study and remains one of the largest nationally present Christian women's collegiate clubs today. Later organizations added more defined social programming along with a Christian emphasis, bridging the gap between non-secular traditional sororities and church-sponsored bible study groups, campus ministries and sect-based clubs and study groups.
Kirsten M. "Kiwi" Smith is an American screenwriter and novelist whose credits include Legally Blonde and Ella Enchanted. She has written most of her screenplays with her screenwriter partner Karen McCullah.
Iota Alpha Pi (ΙΑΠ) is an international collegiate sorority operating in the United States and Canada from March 3, 1903 to July 1971, when it ceased operations. It was then restarted when Alpha Chapter was rechartered at Hunter College in October 2023.
Theta Upsilon (ΘΥ) was a national women's fraternity operating in the United States from February 1921 until May 1962, when the group was absorbed by the Delta Zeta sorority.
Crystal Hefner is an American model who was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for December 2009, and the third wife of Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner from December 2012 until his death in September 2017.
Beta Sigma Omicron (ΒΣΟ) is a defunct American collegiate sorority. It was founded on December 12, 1888, at the University of Missouri and merged with Zeta Tau Alpha on August 7, 1964.