The house bunny

Directed by Fred Wolf. Starring Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, Dana Goodman, Rumer Willis 12A cert, gen release, 97 min

**

FEW FILMS have been as compromised by the mixed nature of their messages as is this fitful, often dubious comedy from Adam Sandler's production company.

The untouchable Anna Faris, as funny as ever, though now burdened with peculiar lip implants, stumbles into shot as a Shelley Darlingson, a Playboy bunny who is cruelly ejected from Hugh Hefner's mansion on her 27th birthday. "That's 59 in bunny years," a passing gay factotum tells her. Broke and directionless, she finds herself being employed as a house mother (whatever that is) at a college sorority house (search me).

At this early stage, the film appears to be taking a swipe at the unlovely attitudes to femininity exhibited by Hefner and his horrible empire. Indeed, the movie's final message that you should "be yourself" surely invites all Playboy bunnies without actual rabbit genes in their make-up to surge for freedom.

Unhappily, the main body of the film offers a contradictory series of arguments. The sorority house in which Faris ends up is inhabited by feminists with piercings, intellectuals in scruffy ponytails, and Bruce Willis's daughter (no, really) in a sort of comedy orthopaedic brace. Eager to encourage more students to join the failing institution, Faris introduces the gang to spangly dresses, precarious shoes and submissive attitudes.

Across town it is revealed that Hef - who is, of course, known for dating woman his own age - never authorised Anna's ejection. As if he would do such a thing!

There are, it must be said, a few decent jokes, and Faris makes something likable of the protagonist. But, as the credits loom, the half-hearted attempts to inject a quasi-feminist subtext become quite laughable. By the close, the students have retreated somewhat from their new, brassy attitudes, but the face furniture has not been reinstalled and a fug of vulgar bling still hangs about their wardrobes.

Be yourself. But don't overdo it.