I actually think Anna Faris is a pretty funny lady, so it’s nice to see her doing an actual comedy, rather than yet another installment of the horror movie spoof series, Scary Movie. Faris plays a bubbly Playboy bunny (and Hef himself makes a cameo appearance) who is tossed out of the mansion for being a bunny of a certain age (27!). She stumbles onto a college campus and gleefully sees that the Greek system isn’t unlike the lifestyle she’s used to at the Playboy mansion. So she applies to be a house mother to one of the sororities.

And naturally she lands a position in a sorority house with the most awkward and socially clueless group of girls. They have dull hair, glasses, and non flesh-baring clothes; talk about inept! Time for a makeover montage! Faris takes the misfits under her bunny wing and teach them how to be better versions of themselves, and the clueless girls also teach her a thing or two when a campus cutie appears to be immune to her beguiling bunny ways.

There’s nothing earth-shattering going on here, but The House Bunny seems like it could be entertaining enough to RENT IT. It has a distinct Legally Blonde feel to it: ultimately pointless, yet harmlessly entertaining. I just hope no one has the “brilliant” idea to turn this one into a Broadway musical.

The House Bunny is not yet rated and opens August 22. (Official site)

Here’s another movie to test my theory that Judd Apatow can’t lose. A pair of stoners, played but Apatow’s usual suspects Seth Rogen and James Franco, are forced to go on the lam when one of them witnesses a murder committed by none other than Bill Lumbergh, I mean, Gary Cole. Hilarious hijinx ensue. And a lot of pot is smoked.

While I’ve been thoroughly entertained by Apatow’s recent films, I’m not quite as stoked about this one as I was about last summer’s offerings of Knocked Up and Superbad. I have no doubt it will be fun and have its hilarious moments, but a stoner movie just seems like a way to get easy laughs. In Knocked Up, Apatow managed to make an unplanned pregnancy hilarious…so why is he now going for the obvious joke of, “hey, look, stoned people are funny!”? Yes, they are, and we all know that, so give us something new.

Normally an Apatow movie would be an automatic ‘see it’ for me, but for Pineapple Express, I think I’ll wait to RENT IT. I have no doubt it’ll be funny, but I’m not sure it’ll be $11 funny.

Pineapple Express is rated R and opens August 8. (IMDB site)

Recipe for Made of Honor:

Take two parts My Best Friend’s Wedding, one part Four Weddings and a Funeral, a couple of cheesy pratfalls, shake well, and pour over McDreamy Patrick Dempsey. Serve chilled and enjoy!

I’m slightly curious if there’s an original bone anywhere in this movie, which seems to have just borrowed bits and pieces from some of the most popular romantic comedies ever made. I admit to enjoying a chick flick when it’s clever and original, but this rehash of pilfered pieces leaves me cold. In a nutshell, Dempsey takes too long to realize he’s in love with his best friend (yes, a female best friend). By the time he realizes that she’s his one and only, she’s engaged to someone else. And to add the extra twist to the knife, she asks him to be her maid of honor. Can he put a stop to the wedding to go after his own happily ever after? Should he even try to meddle with his best friend’s happiness? Does anyone really care?

I may watch this whenever it finds it’s way to basic cable, but for now this is a SKIP IT for me. I’ve seen more original plots in episodes of Saved by the Bell (and there ain’t nothing original about Saved by the Bell).

Made of Honor is not yet rated and opens May 8. (Official site)

Even before I watched this trailer, I knew that 21, the fact-based story of a bunch of MIT students who card-counted their way through Vegas, was going to be a SEE IT for me. For two reasons.

First off, I recently returned from a fairly brutal trip to Vegas, and I love the idea of watching a bunch of college-kids take the casinos for a heap of money.

And secondly, I read the book that this movie is based on (Bringing Down the House), and even though the book was written pretty poorly, the story itself was so good that it didn’t really matter. And with that in mind, I figure that even if this movie isn’t made particularly well, it’s still going to be a fun flick to watch.

Luckily, from the looks of this trailer, it does look like the film was made pretty well. First off, it’s both action-packed and sexually charged, which means that the filmmakers took enough creative liberties in telling this “fact-based” story to ensure that the movie will be even more entertaining than the book. And secondly, even though I’m not a huge fan of this Jim Sturgess guy, I love the idea of seeing both Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne in the same movie.

Like I said, I’m definitely going to see 21 in the theaters. I just hope it doesn’t get me so pumped up that I go back to Vegas and try to win back all the money I recently lost.

21 is rated R and opens March 28. (Official Site)

I have yet to read the novel that The Other Boleyn Girl is based on, but that doesn’t deter from my interest in this trailer. I’m kind of a sucker for period pieces, so showing me images of actors in gowns and ruffled collars piques my interest. Then showing me an alternate look at a major time in history, and I’m pretty much sold.

The Other Boleyn Girl tells the tale of the two Boleyn sisters who wind up competing for the affection of King Henry VIII. Anne, the sister we all learned about in history class, is promised to the king. But then his head is turned when he meets her equally as beguiling sister, Mary. The girls are pitted against each other as rivals, and things go from bad to worse when Anne has problems conceiving a child and must turn to Mary to help her. Because we all know how well Anne’s fertility problems went over with Henry (hint: not well at all).

Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson are the Boleyn sisters, and they look as much like natural sisters as Gwyneth Paltrow and myself. But I have no doubt that their performances will detract the audiences focus from this. Eric Bana is King Henry, and hopefully I’ll finally be able to figure out what it is about him that so many other women find so swoon-worthy when I go to SEE IT.

The Other Boleyn Girl is not yet rated and opens February 29. (Official site)

This trailer hit the internet a few days ago, and I have to say, it’s one of the best trailers I’ve seen in a while.

I’m always curious about how much input a filmmaker gets into designing the trailer for their movie. I know that most trailers are made by big marketing firms like Trailer Park, but when I see a gutsy trailer like this one for Slipstream, I just can’t imagine that the director (in this case Anthony Hopkins) had no creative input into how it got made.

Judging from the plot description (and from the trailer!), Slipstream seems like it’ll be an interesting movie. It’s about a screenwriter whose mind goes haywire, causing him to slip into his movie and his characters to slip into his real life.

That plot reminds me a bit of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, where Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time. I loved that book, and it seems like that sort of a trippy, disjointed story could play really well on film. Unfortunately, such a story would have to be directed exceptionally well to pull it off, and as much as I like Anthony Hopkins, he’s just too inexperienced of a director to make me believe that he’ll succeed.

If this thing was directed by David Fincher, I’d be all over it, but seeing how Hopkins has only directed two previous movies, I’m going to have to wait and RENT IT. But if it’s any consolation to Sir Anthony, I’m going to watch the trailer a few more times, perhaps with some popcorn and a large soda.

Slipstream is rated R and opens in limited release on October 26. (Official Site)

There’s no denying that Judd Apatow has had an amazing year with the successes of Knocked Up and Superbad. And it looks like he’s poised to finish off the year on another high note with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which Apatow co-wrote and produced. Walk Hard is a spoof on the big musician biopics like Ray and Walk the Line, telling the story of the rise and fall of the great (and fictional) Dewey Cox.

Cox is played by John C. Reilly, whose comedic skills are often underused and underestimated, so I’m thrilled to see him in a movie like this. And as he proved in Chicago, he can sing, so the many hits of Dewey Cox will be ably performed. The rest of the cast is rounded out with some impressive comedic talents, such as SNL’s Kristen Wiig as Cox’s shrill shrew of a wife who just doesn’t “get” his need to perform and The Office’s Jenna Fisher as a June Carter-like character who catches Cox’s eye. Then there’s the plethora of cameos, ranging from the White Stripe’s Jack White as Elvis, to Apatow regular Paul Rudd as John Lennon, to Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly.

I’m wavering between seeing it and renting it, and right now I’m more likely to RENT IT. That way I can juvenilely snicker at all the tongue-in-cheek uses of the word “Cox” from the privacy of my own home.

Walk Hard is not yet rated and opens December 21. (Official site)

Superbad opens tomorrow; buy your tickets now before they sell out. Rachel said RENT IT based on the R-rated trailer, but after attending an advance screening, I’m saying run and SEE IT.

Crude laughs abound in this story of two uber-geeks who are trying to lose their virginity before heading to college. If this plot sounds familiar, don’t fret, Superbad is fresh and hilarious. Somehow this has become the summer of Jonah Hill (Knocked Up and Evan Almighty) and he is in top form as a swearing ball of hormones. I fell a little bit in love with Michael Cera (George-Michael Bluth from Arrested Development) who plays the straight man but gets the biggest laughs. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote this when they were 13 just to see if they could; now that Rogen is too old to play the lead, he gets some hilarious scenes as the world’s worst cop. But it’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Fogell (a.k.a. McLovin!!!!) who steals the show.

Superbad is one of those movies (like Borat) that you’ll want to see as soon as possible before everyone ruins the jokes for you. Trust me, everyone will start quoting the movie immediately after the credits start rolling. (In fact, I’m tempted to see the movie again just to remember some of the better lines.) If you’re wondering why all your friends are screaming “McLovin!!”, blame Superbad.

Ah, Lindsay, Lindsay, Lindsay, why do you keep making movies that look like they stink? Why? Unlike your (ex?) buddy Paris, you can’t get away with making crappy movies because people know you’re actually talented.

I mean, come on, who didn’t like Mean Girls? Freaky Friday was a gem of a remake. The best part of A Prairie Home Companion was your song at the end. Aside from those movies, you’ve taken some awful career advice lately. It turns out that you cannot open a movie on your own unless it actually has a good script. People can smell “Lindsay Lohan” vehicles coming from a mile away. And boy does I Know Who Killed Me reek. (That is, unless your fans just want to see you as a stripper. That’s right folks, Lilo goes pole dancing in I Know Who Killed Me.)

So, please, Linds, hole yourself up in Vancouver and make an independent ensemble movie for no money. Or star in a big-budget musical adaptation of a Broadway smash. (If Spring Awakening gets made in the next two years, you’ll still be young enough to play the female lead.) You could still become your generation’s Jodie Foster if you play the cards right.

I Know Who Killed Me is rated R and opens on July 27. SKIP IT. (Official site)

Here’s another red band trailer to add to Tal’s list: Superbad. The tale of some sexually desperate teenage boys’ quest to get laid is certainly familiar territory, and I’m not sure any teen sex comedy will come close to topping Jason Biggs getting it on with a pie in American Pie. But this trailer has some laugh-out-loud moment and one of the film’s writers is Seth Rogen, who was great in The 40 Year Old Virgin and it looks like his other comedy out this summer, Knocked Up, is another winner, so the man definitely knows what he’s doing in this genre of film.

While Superbad looks like it’ll be funny, cringe-worthy, and uncomfortable to watch (all prerequisites for a sex comedy), I’ll probably wait and RENT IT. Having never been a hormonal teenage boy (thank god), this movie doesn’t offer enough to me to make it worth my $11. But I am glad to see Michael Cera acting again. I would imagine that most of the people who see Superbad in the theater will be fans of his from the prematurely cancelled Arrested Development. As one of the few young actors in Hollywood today who is actually funny and talented, I hope to see him appearing in more movies. But of course if the whole acting thing doesn’t work out, there’s always money in the banana stand. *wink*

Superbad is rated R and opens August 17. (Official site)