OPENS TODAY: This Bunny’s funny!

Although the Playboy Bunny in the House Bunny is lovable and hilariously silly, the movie falls short in terms of a good story and a strong ending.

THE HOUSE BUNNY
Directed by Fred Wolf

Starring Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, Katharine McPhee, Rumer Willis, Kiely Williams

THIS film has a Playboy Bunny getting tossed out from Hugh Hefner’s mansion to end up running a sorority house full of socially clueless girls. It’s like Legally Blonde minus the legal jargon.

Quite an interesting storyline, I must say, but the way it is played out leaves much to be desired.

While Anna Faris’ portrayal of Playboy Bunny Shelley is excellent, the sorority girls act too unbelievably stupid to be magically transformed into the coolest girls in school by the end of the movie.

I never thought that I would say this about Faris, but the actress from the Scary Movie franchise clearly shines in her role as the pea-brained bimbo with a lot of heart.
Faris oozes blonde bombshell silliness with every squeal and word, as well as in her body language. She nails the character completely, playing Shelley as if she and the character are one and the same.

The rest of the cast, however, do not match Faris’ fine performance.

Oliver (Colin Hanks, son of Tom Hanks) is just palatable as the good-natured student who volunteers at an old folks’ home.

Rumer Willis (daughter of actress Demi Moore and actor Bruce Willis), who plays Joanne in the sorority, does not impress either — perhaps “acting genes” don’t pass down automatically.

The plot is quite jarring and unrealistic. The producers seem more intent on showing skin than tying up loose ends.

For example, when Shelley enrols in school or the character development of the sorority sisters.

Then there’s a girl who always hides in the closet and no clue is given as to why she does that.

You know the film is bad when the best moments are catchy tunes sung by someone other than the original artiste (in this case Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend and Rihanna’s Take a Bow).

The movie attempts to examine peer pressure and the endless rivalry between the cool girls and the nerdy ones.

The message is to be true to yourself and to have a good heart but director Fred Wolf doesn’t bring it across with a good story and a strong ending.

Instead, the movie just plods along with a bad script and scenes that are more irritating than funny, even if there is occasional hilarity.

But, thanks to Faris, the story is watchable.

Venice Film Festival opens with Hollywood flash

Actors George Clooney, right, and Brad Pitt arrive for the premiere of the movie ‘Burn After Reading’. — AP pic

VENICE, Aug 28 — The Venice Film Festival opened last night with the premiere of the Coen brothers' dark comedy "Burn After Reading," giving a flash of Hollywood glamour to a festival lineup with a definite art house feel.

The 21 films competing for the coveted Golden Lion at the festival, which runs through to Sept 6, will provide a snapshot of world cinema, with entries from Ethiopia, Turkey, Algeria and a Brazilian-Chinese production.

While the lineup gives the impression of being light on celebrity-driven Hollywood fare — due both to the impact of last year's writers' strike and a late selection process for Cannes' springtime festival — festival director Marco Mueller said US films are well represented.

"This is the second time — and it is a record for the history of the festival — we have five American films in competition," Mueller said, emphasising that selections aren't based on any national criteria. "The festival is not an atlas of nations."

"Burn After Reading," starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton, is among another five American films being shown out of competition.

The first US film vying for the Golden Lion is Guillermo Arriaga's "The Burning Plain," starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger as a mother and daughter trying to forge a bond. The writer of "21 Grams" is making his debut as director.

Darren Aronofsky will present "The Wrestler," starring Mickey Rourke as a wrestler forced into retirement who strikes up a romance with an ageing stripper played by Marisa Tomei. Jonathan Demme will be showing his "Rachel Getting Married" starring Anne Hathaway as a daughter whose return home for her sister's wedding brings out old tensions.

Kathryn Bigelow is bringing "The Hurt Locker," an Iraq war drama portraying soldiers who defuse bombs in the heat of war. Also among the US entries is Iranian-born Amir Naderi's "Vegas: Based on a True Story," about the family life of a compulsive gambler.

Pitt picked up an award yesterday that he won last year — the best actor's prize for "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford."

"You can run but you can't hide," Pitt joked as he accepted the award during the opening ceremony. "It was an honour to receive this last year and it remains an honour to accept this this year."

German filmmaker Wim Wenders, whose credits include "Paris, Texas" and "Buena Vista Social Club," is heading this year's jury.

"We will see 21 films and I hope — and I have a lot of confidence in Marco — that we will see 21 films that will give us the state of art of what is cinema today," Wenders said.

"Burn After Reading" is Clooney's third film with the Coen brothers — completing what he called "his trilogy of idiots" after "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Intolerable Cruelty."

Pitt and McDormand play a pair of hapless gym employees who get in way over their heads when the memoirs of a failed CIA analyst, played by John Malkovich, fall into their hands and they try to peddle them as classified intelligence. Clooney plays a hypochondriac philanderer having an affair with the CIA analyst's disappointed wife, played by Swinton.

"We started writing the movie as kind of an exercise, thinking of what kind of parts these actors might play, what kind of story they might inhabit," Ethan Coen told a news conference.

The film is set within a spy story for no other reason than "we hadn't done one before," Joel Coen told reporters.

"It could have been a dog movie or an outer space movie. We just kind of landed on a spy movie," he said. — AP