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The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 21, 2008

Updated:

The House Bunny **½

Just in time for back-to-school comes "The House Bunny," which won't teach you anything new or useful, but it will prepare you for sorority rush.

The purpose of this comedy is to showcase Anna Faris, star of the "Scary Movie" franchise, whose sunny disposition and comic timing make "The House Bunny" more enjoyable than it ought to be.

It's essentially a female remake of "Revenge of the Nerds," with a script from "Legally Blonde" writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, so it contains the same type of facetious humor. Faris, in all her ditsy glory, functions as a descendant from a long line of supposedly dumb blondes (which includes Reese Witherspoon's Elle Woods), but she's so unafraid of going for the big, goofy laugh at her own expense that she makes this familiar role her own.

Faris stars as Shelley, a perky Playboy bunny who gets kicked out of Hef's mansion and becomes the house mother for Zeta Alpha Zeta, a sorority full of misfits. Actually "full" is stretching it, since the Zetas have only seven members, and they need to come up with 30 pledges to avoid being kicked off campus and having the mean-girl Phi Iota Mus take over their house.

And so Shelley transforms these wallflowers into Pussycat Dolls, and turns the Zeta house into the place to be.

Silly? Impossible? Of course. This is a Happy Madison film, after all - though it is refreshing to see Adam Sandler's production company come up with a female-centric comedy for once.

PG-13 (sex-related humor, partial nudity and brief strong profanity); 98 minutes

The Longshots

Ice Cube's inevitable, uplifting sports bioflick, "The Longshots," is here. It's not as dopey as the gangsta rapper's family comedies.

But it is formulaic, which is kind of a shame since Jasmine Plummer's story is a pretty unusual one.

Played very well here by "Akeelah and the Bee's" Keke Palmer, the middle-schooler was the first girl quarterback to take her team to the Pop Warner Superbowl. In the film, she's a sullen bookworm with a long-gone daddy and no friends. When her mom (Tasha Smith) takes an extra shift at the diner in their economically depressed little town, Jasmine's unemployed uncle Curtis (Cube) is roped into hanging with the girl after school.

A former high-school gridiron star, now prone to wandering around with a pigskin in one hand and a Budweiser in the other, Curtis gets on Jasmine's nerves and vice versa.

Once Curtis discovers that his no-good brother at least gave Jasmine his excellent arm, though, it's just a matter of waiting out the clock until the redemption express picks up has-been, phenom and the whole blessed town.

PG (profanity); 94 minutes

Christy Lemire, The Associated Press Bob Strauss. Los Angeles Daily News

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