CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

85 Alexandra
40 America the Beautiful
66 American Teen
74 Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer
65 August Evening
xx Bachna Ae Haseeno
62 Baghead
58 Beautiful Losers
xx Beer for My Horses
47 Before the Rains
80 Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
56 Bottle Shock
75 Boy A
55 Bra Boys
61 Brick Lane
64 Brideshead Revisited
61 Bustin' Down the Door
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
xx Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips
54 CSNY: Déjà Vu
33 Cthulhu
86 Edge of Heaven, The
66 Elegy
52 Elsa & Fred
80 Encounters at the End of the World
26 Everybody Wants to Be Italian
64 Fall, The
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
65 Flow: For Love of Water
39 Forgiveness
82 Frozen River
73 Girl Cut in Two, A
62 Girls Rock!
xx Goal II: Living the Dream
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
54 Hamlet 2
25 Hell Ride
44 Henry Poole is Here
74 I Served the King of England
72 I.O.U.S. A
64 In Search of a Midnight Kiss
46 Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
67 Jellyfish
62 Kabluey
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
78 Last Mistress, The
50 Last Stop for Paul
70 Love Songs
61 Man Named Pearl, A
89 Man on Wire
62 Mister Foe
85 Momma's Man
74 Mongol
78 Moving Midway
46 My Mexican Shivah
80 Order of Myths, The
66 Patti Smith: Dream of Life
xx Phoebe in Wonderland
55 Ping Pong Playa
76 Pool, The
72 Priceless
61 Red
71 Roman de gare
78 Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
51 Savage Grace
55 Save Me
72 Secret, A
57 Sixty Six
56 Sukiyaki Western Django
18 Surfer, Dude
83 Tell No One
56 Then She Found Me
71 To the Limit
57 Towelhead
72 Transsiberian
80 Trouble the Water
83 U2 3D
86 Up the Yangtze
79 Visitor, The
61 Wackness, The
54 What We Do Is Secret
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
67 XXY
54 Year of the Fish
39 Young People F**king
75 Young@Heart

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

House Bunny, The
Columbia Pictures (Sony)

House Bunny, The reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 55 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.8 out of 10
based on 22 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 20 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for sex-related humor, partial nudity and brief strong language

Starring Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, Dana Goodman, Katharine McPhee, Rumer Willis, Christopher McDonald, and Beverly D'Angelo

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. (Sony Pictures)


GENRE(S): Comedy  
WRITTEN BY: Karen McCullah Lutz
Kirsten Smith
 
DIRECTED BY: Fred Wolf  
RELEASE DATE: Theatrical: August 22, 2008 
RUNNING TIME: minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

80
Los Angeles Times Michael Ordona
Among the sunnier, funnier films of the year, thanks largely to the zest with which Faris embodies a mental vacuum.
Read Full Review
75
TV Guide Ken Fox
Silly but endearing comedy.
Read Full Review
70
LA Weekly Scott Foundas
The movie is basically on one level and Faris on another -- in that exclusive aerie occupied by Judy Holliday, Carole Lombard, Lucille Ball and a few other blissfully original comedy goddesses.
Read Full Review
70
The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
Manages to stand on its own two skyscraper heels thanks to the comic force of nature that is Anna Faris.
Read Full Review
70
Variety John Anderson
A blissfully broad comedy that should catapult Anna Faris into a singular kind of stardom.
Read Full Review
70
The New York Times Nathan Lee
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.
Read Full Review
70
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The picture is sharp, in a warm, fuzzy way, about the ways women can sometimes inflict cruelty on other women in the name of feminism. Feminism doesn't have to be the enemy of kindness, but sometimes -- alarmingly often -- it is.
Read Full Review
67
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The movie flaunts its comedy roots like a messy bleach job.
Read Full Review
67
Christian Science Monitor Robert Koehler
For all her chops as a dramatic actor, she's our new Judy Holliday and Goldie Hawn, only even sharper.
Read Full Review
63
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The movie is a commercial for Hugh Hefner that makes his magazine seem like "Seventeen."
Read Full Review
63
USA Today Claudia Puig
Bunny is fashioned as a bawdy comedy with heart, but its reliance on formula undercuts the amusing moments.
Read Full Review
60
Slate Dana Stevens
The movie also has some embarrassing laugh-free stretches, but Faris holds everything together with bubbly intelligence, unexpected line readings, and a few deft pratfalls.
Read Full Review
58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It's funny. Dumb, yes, but funny.
Read Full Review
50
New York Post Lou Lumenick
So haphazardly written and directed that it barely qualifies as a movie, The House Bunny is watchable solely for the comic stylings of the blond veteran of the "Scary Movie" series.
Read Full Review
50
San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub
Screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith may not have any original ideas, but they write some good lines and have a great actress to deliver them.
Read Full Review
50
Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Despite a winning performance by Anna Faris, the cutest thing in platform shoes since Goldie Hawn, the film falls on its keister so many times that before long the perky pinkness turns bruising black-and-blue.
Read Full Review
50
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Faris has mostly logged time in dire vehicles like The House Bunny, which are dumb-dumb to her smart-dumb.
Read Full Review
40
New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
not a good comedy. But there's no airbrushing out the funny surrounding its star.
Read Full Review
40
Austin Chronicle Steve Davis
This empty-headed comedy about a Playmate who finds herself a house mother to a group of misfit sorority sisters is little more than a recycled version of "Legally Blonde" with bunny ears.
Read Full Review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Yes, from "Blonde" to "Bunny," it's abundantly evident that the two scribes have mastered, truly mastered, the serious art of self-plagiarism.
Read Full Review
30
Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman
Unfortunately, Ms. Faris has neither an adroit script -- House Bunny is a stale collection of dumb bunny jokes -- nor Ms. Witherspoon's wily charm. And the filmmakers do Ms. Faris no favors by inviting comparisons to Marilyn Monroe.
Read Full Review
25
ReelViews James Berardinelli
The resulting hodgepodge of unfunny, sophomoric humor and PG-13 T&A;, frosted by a sheen of appallingly nauseous "drama," makes for such a noxious brew that it's amazing viewers stay in their seats for the entire production.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 6.8 (out of 10) based on 20 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chad S. gave it a5:
Twenty was antediluvian in Menudo years. In the house of "wome-nudo", it's twenty-seven. Beauty and brains, that's the happy medium all women should hanker for, because that's "what boys like". A sensitive "boy" like Oliver(Colin Hanks), who looks after oldsters in a retirement home, prizes scintillating dinner conversation above a gravity-defying rack, right? In "The House Bunny", a homeless bunny imparts her Playboy ideology to some ostracized sorority girls, who in return, help Shelley(Anna Faris) feel better about herself when they point the "dumb blonde" in the direction of the nearest library. Since "The House Bunny" never shows these nerdy girls excelling in the classroom, or anything to compensate for their lack of success with the opposite sex, looking f***able is the only currency that matters. To suggest that Shelly needs a cerebral cortex makeover is disingenuous, at best, in a film that received Hugh Hefner's endorsement. While Natalie(Emma Stone) gets her man by being the best version of herself, Shelly wins Oliver over without ever having to read another book. The fact that Shelley turns down a chance to be a Playboy centerfold is beside the point. She's still hopelessly vapid. No man ever dates a woman for her brains.

Daniel C. gave it a5:
Wait for this one to come out on DVD. There are funny parts, but nothing to rush to the theater for.

Shaun X gave it a9:
Really an 8, but I wanted to temper all the other bad scores. Not really a good movie, but it's really funny, especially if you like Anna Faris' dumb blond humor that she is so good at.

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: Fantasy Football | Miley Cyrus | MLB | iPhone 3G | GPS | Recipes | Shwayze | NFL

About CNET Networks | Jobs | Advertise

© 2008 CNET Networks, Inc., a CBS Company. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use