The House Bunny

When a sweetly luscious airhead (Anna Faris) gets kicked out of the Playboy Mansion for reaching the advanced age of 27, she becomes house mother to a college sorority of dweeby misfits. Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith’s script is a lame one-joke rehash of National Lampoon’s Animal House, and under Fred Wolf’s oafish direction it makes a pretty lousy movie. Despite all that, there’s a reason the movie’s impossible not to like, and her name is Anna Faris, a classic beauty with star presence and flawless comic timing. After years of playing thankless second-banana to Rob Schneider and the Wayans brothers, Faris is long overdue for her own Legally Blonde-style breakthrough, and this could be it. Colin Hanks, Emma Stone and Hugh Hefner (as himself) stand out in a generally strong supporting cast.