Ep177 – Be All Ears for the House Bunny
Brains. Beauty. Bravery. These girls got it all… They just don’t know it yet.
Source: IMDB.com
House Bunny
Timecodes
- 00:00 – DMP Ad
- :30 – Introduction
- :46 – The Film Facts
- 3:56 – The Pickup Line
- 9:49 – Acting choices & character development
- 23:44 – Playboy’s evolution and cultural relevance
- 29:10 – Head Trauma
- 29:39- Smoochie, Smoochie, Smoochie
- 29:56- Driving Review
- 31:13 – To the Numbers
Next week’s film will be Groundhog Day (1993)
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Episode Transcript (Provided by Otter 95% accurate)
Christi Dodge 0:00
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Brennan 0:30
You’re listening to dodge movie podcast. Your hosts are Christi and Mike dodge, the founders of dodge Media Productions, we produce films and podcasts. So this is a podcast about films. Join them as they share their passion for filmmaking.
Christi Dodge 0:47
Welcome back everybody to the Dodge movie podcast. This is episode 177 and we are going to talk about the 2008 film House Bunny. We watched it on Amazon for 399 and this was super fan RJ pick from one of his winning guesses last year. House Bunny is directed by Fred Wolf, who did 1995 Tommy Boy, 2000 ones. Joe Dirt, 2000 10s, grown ups and 2000 fours without a paddle. Good friend of David Spade, yes, exactly. It stars Anna Ferris, Colin, Hanks, Emma Stone, cat Dennings, Christopher McDonald and Beverly D’Angelo.
The DP was Shelly Johnson, who did jurassic park three in 2001 wolfman in 2010 Captain America, The First Avenger in 2011 and most recently 2020s greyhound. It was filmed at the Playboy Mansion, farmers market, USC, the pink motel and Jack’s Cadillac diner in Westwood and in Sun Valley. The writer is Karen McCullough, who did Legally Blonde in 2001 2000 nine’s ugly truth.
Kirsten Smith, 1999 is 10 Things I Hate About You. 2009 studio was Columbia Pictures and Happy Madison, which explains kind of the director tie in, as well as some of those other films. The synopsis for this film is after Playboy Bunny Shelly is kicked out of the Playboy Mansion. She finds a job as a house mother for a sorority full of socially awkward girls. I have about five taglines for you.
Mike Dodge 2:36
All right, let’s see if they got one in there, bodaciously
Christi Dodge 2:39
going where nobody has gone before college,
Mike Dodge 2:44
okay, for this kind of film, I think that’s probably about right for
Christi Dodge 2:47
this kind of film, but I feel like there was at least one episode of college girls of in the Playboy magazines. Am I wrong?
Mike Dodge 2:56
Oh, I think they had girls of the pack, 10, girls of the Big 10. I mean, I think they had a lot of those
Christi Dodge 3:01
right for the girls of this of zeta house, college life was no party until Shelly showed up.
Mike Dodge 3:10
Too party, yeah? Well,
Christi Dodge 3:13
I stumbled on too
Mike Dodge 3:15
Taki. It’s like a sentence.
Christi Dodge 3:18
They wanted a role model. They
Mike Dodge 3:20
got a playmate. Okay, I like that. That one’s good, huh? Yeah, that’s good. Good. Punchy brains, beauty,
Christi Dodge 3:25
bravery. These girls got it all. They just don’t know it yet. Nope, nope, nope. Okay. Last one, bodaciously going where no bunny has gone before University.
Mike Dodge 3:37
Okay, did she go to a college or university? I don’t know that. I know
Christi Dodge 3:41
they, they basically repeated that first one. They just changed up where she went. Yeah,
Mike Dodge 3:46
so I’m gonna stick with they wanted a role model. They gotta play me. And I think that’s the best, that’s the winner. Yeah,
Christi Dodge 3:52
okay, kick us off with your pickup line for the house money.
Mike Dodge 3:56
It all started 27 years ago. Said by Shelly doesn’t support my theory.
Christi Dodge 4:02
No, it kind of sets us, tease us up for that she and so I assume she started out the narration i We it’s been so long since we’ve recorded, I forgot a lot of this movie, so you’re gonna help. Have to help us get through this. For the poor listeners, no
Mike Dodge 4:16
Paul or apologies to miss Ferris and Mr. Wolf. But it’s not a very complicated film. So like Mr. Holmes, where if you blink or go to the bathroom at the wrong time, you’ll not be able to figure it out. You’re
Christi Dodge 4:29
not gonna you’re gonna be saying so for a kind of what do they call that? Like lowbrow Would you consider this lowbrow comedy?
Mike Dodge 4:37
I think we call it broad comedy, lighter way to say it. But yeah, yeah. So
Christi Dodge 4:42
for this broad comedy, what did you feel about like? Was it a predictable plot?
Mike Dodge 4:50
Well, yes and no, I think it was predictable in that we all understood at the beginning of the film, and we may talk about this. Film later in the podcast. But like from Animal House, I think any fraternity or sorority based film where the inciting incident is, oh no, they’re going to get kicked off campus, Revenge of the Nerds, any of those you kind of know? Okay, there’s going to be some challenges, but they’re going to figure it out in the end, right?
So in that sense, there’s not a I don’t think there’s a particular confusion about what was going on, but I do think it was humorously done that. You know, the thing with these movies about sororities is it gives you a cast of characters and ensemble, and so you get to see the various different the girl with, like, the brace that she doesn’t need, right?
And, you know, the pregnant girl and all these different things. So you get that opportunity to go through and they do, you know, a different job in this it’s, it’s just like with old school, right? You see some different characters. And so the variances in the characters they pick, rather, in my opinion, than the fact that you have this band of misfits that’s just kind of the Dirty Dozen all over again,
Christi Dodge 6:06
right? Which is almost echoed in the casting. Because, since it is Fred, Fred Wolf, and I believe doesn’t he appear in a lot of Sandler films also, in addition to directing him, or is he just behind the camera. I
Mike Dodge 6:21
don’t know if I recognize him by name, but yeah, a bunch of his buddies, yeah? Dennis Dugan and Alan, yeah. Alan covert, yeah, okay, yeah. There is, there is his crew that does make cameos, yes.
Christi Dodge 6:35
So happy. Madison from 2000 regulars, Dan Patrick, Alan covert, Jonathan lowgran and Nick Swartz, and all make cameos in this film as well. Dan Patrick is a cop, covert is the waiter. Lofgren is in drag. Is the drag queen in jail, and then Swartz, and is a photographer, which
Mike Dodge 6:56
is interesting about Swartz, and because I actually didn’t know he was a regular of Adam’s crew. I recognize him from Reno 911, right,
Christi Dodge 7:05
right? And so what about overall? Because you like to talk a lot about character development, and so Shelley’s character, she obviously she’s our protagonist. And so in theory, we’re rooting for her to be successful in this venture.
Mike Dodge 7:25
This is kind of an interesting inversion of a trope, which, of course, always appeals to me in that it’s kind of the opposite of an ugly duckling, that she goes from being the quote, unquote swan. There’s a great line in there. I’m just walking around in the body God and Dr Borkman gave me. And then it shows that she’s actually, she kind of does the opposite of the Swan turn, right? Would that be a goose turn, Gosling turn? And so that’s kind of an interesting twist.
How they they show that each of the the different misfits, they have more to offer. And again, it’s kind of like the popular kids. It kind of, again, all our revenge of the nerds, that there was this sorority of nerds, and then this popular person came in, and she helped them, not as much become popular, but get some confidence, right? So it is an interesting twist, and I think that gets lost in the fact that it is a broad comedy, and it does star basically a playmate. There’s a girl with stripper heels and a bikini, and I think it’s kind of fun that they, they, they turn that on its head a little bit by having her kind of teach the others. Yeah,
Christi Dodge 8:37
you were talking about the costumes. Shelley’s character had approximately 70 outfit changes, and so at a run time of 98 minutes, it meant that every 1.4 minutes Anna Ferris’s character, Shelley was changing her outfit, which is just insane from an organizational aspect of the film.
Mike Dodge 8:58
So my first note under costumes was bikinis. Oh, so many bikinis, so
Christi Dodge 9:03
many bikinis. But
Mike Dodge 9:04
you know, the good thing about that for wardrobe is they’re small volumetrically, so it didn’t take up a lot of room in the truck. There you go. And so there’s obviously this later, a costume callback to Marilyn Monroe, right, with a white dress, which is, I think, hilarious, because in LA there are no steaming subway, right, like manhole covers. And then it was interesting that they use the cardigan to indicate intelligence. So cardigans can be sexy.
Christi Dodge 9:38
So was Shelly wearing the said cardigan? Or was one idea
Mike Dodge 9:40
that was No, I thought it was Shelly. She puts on the cardigan to impress Oliver, played by Colin Hanks, who we’ve talked about a little bit recently. We kind of
Christi Dodge 9:52
skipped over cinematography. Was there anything that you noted that was done to further to, you know, further the story?
Mike Dodge 9:59
Right? Well, there are many montages. Mr. Wolf and I are both fans of the Montage. It opens with a home snapshots montage. And I always think nowadays that these are actual snapshots from the actors childhood. I agree, of course, with Photoshop. They only really need, like a face, I guess, and they can put it in. But I just think that actors now have so much more, especially snapshots, available, than they did before, that you can do that. I wonder
Christi Dodge 10:32
if studios now just have, like shared files amongst all the editors. You know, the last time that Anna Ferris did a movie she brought in a picture when she was 812, 15, you know. And so here’s your, you know, your Anna Ferris at 15 that you can manipulate and Photoshop in any way you need to.
Mike Dodge 10:53
I would love to talk to the art department. Is there the equivalent of the Wilhelm scream, but for family snapshots? Right? Right, exactly. And so there were a lot of that. I did notice that early in the film, it was striking. There’s a close up with light coming through a window that makes a horizontal bar of lighting across Shelley’s boobs. And so when we light things in a film, we light things we want you to look at. So I kind of think I see what they’re going for there. Yeah, there’s definitely something they wanted you to look at. And then there was an interesting tracking shot of Carrie may going back and forth, which I thought was interesting, again, for kind of a broad comedy.
And then there’s another tracking shot as Shelly walks down the aisle in the meeting. You know, we often think in terms of broad comedies, is that they don’t really have a lot of cinematographic storytelling. But that’s, I think, not true. I don’t know how to shoot something funny, but I’m sure that there are very specific techniques that they employ. Maybe it’s something as simple as an edit suite, but I think of like, you know, a whip pan, or these tracking shots, they’re probably things that work better, and so maybe they don’t get quite as much credit as the big war movies, right, right,
Christi Dodge 12:10
right. It’s yeah, like, yeah. Perfectly said, What did you think of the acting choices of like, you know, like an un I would think at this point unknown cat, Dennings and some of the other girls, wasn’t. It wasn’t Melissa Benoit, who was the tall, dark haired
Mike Dodge 12:32
it wasn’t Benoit.
Christi Dodge 12:35
Maybe I’m thinking of cat. Oh, well, there’s Emma Stone playing one of the girls she played. Thought there was no like now known one moment, Catherine McPhee is who I was thinking of. Yes. McPhee, so what did you think of the character development of some of the other characters, like an kind of the at this time, unknown cat Dennings, because I don’t believe the two Broke Girls had come out yet. We have Catherine McPhee. We’ve got Emma Stone. So I remember Willis also,
Mike Dodge 13:09
I think rumor was the one with the braces and the Forrest Gump callback slow mo running scene. So at this point in her career, I think Emma was playing more the smart girl, and she does that quite well. ANNA Ferris as I recall at this point, was fairly unknown, and I thought it was she trod a fine line to make her character Shelly seem actually like a playmate, Bimbo, but still be likable. That’s a difficult, I think, thing to pull off. Yeah,
Christi Dodge 13:42
I was trying to figure out, as you were talking, was her character supposed to be dumb, or just kind of, like, naive in that, you know, kind of hick from the south, or, I don’t know, like, just, was she, like, what do they call it, like an ingenue or, or naive? Or was she dumb?
Mike Dodge 14:02
I read it as she was dumb, but in there’s this Hollywood type of of so dumb they’re actually smart, right? And that gets kind of to you. Sometimes see that with the the hick, the person who is uneducated and can cut through the silliness with their homespun wisdom, right? A little bit of that, but it was more I as I tracked her dialog throughout the film, they really continued to kind of portray her as a bit of a simpleton. And I’m thinking in particular, near the end of the film, one of the characters says Oliver is the kind of guy who wants to have a conversation before you hook up, and she’s like, he’s gay, so it I don’t really see a particular development in that sense.
And her character, Shelly, I think, has less development, and she’s more just the ins, the catalyst. Yeah, the catalyst is a great word for the reaction of. The others as we see them kind of blossom. It’s difficult to get a lot of character development when you have an ensemble piece. And I think of those, the Emma Stone character is the one that we see the most of, and she has like the guy she’s interested in, and we see her kind of come out of her shell. And so in some sense, the other characters are really disappointing cast members, and it’s more about Anna Ferriss character, getting Emma Stone’s character to to blossom.
Christi Dodge 15:25
I do think you’re right that that it is mostly Emma’s character, but it is interesting that, like we just see that small scene, but what a change Shelly had on. You have someone like rumor Willis, who has been, well, her character. I should look up her name, because you’re not supposed to talk about that, Joanne. Joanne was wearing this brace, and then we find out really didn’t need it. It was almost like a comfort brace for her. And when she got to see herself in another light, through Shelly or through kind of Shelley’s confidence, they got to experience some confidence, and then it allowed them to step outside, kind of almost this boxed in idea of themselves that they had, yeah, and they got to flourish.
Mike Dodge 16:16
Yeah. The problem that I think you have an ensemble piece, especially with a broad comedy because they’re shorter, is you don’t have a lot of time to really establish before and after for some of the other characters. So the example of rumor will assist Joanne is a good one. It doesn’t really take a lot of backstory for us to figure out that it’s good that the braces fall off right, right?
So that’s fairly straightforward. And what we see, I think, is not a lot of development from Colin Hanks Oliver, right? He’s, he’s really what is to be attained, not so much as to change. And I wouldn’t say that the other sorority and fraternity people change a whole lot. Or it’s really, I think, just about a little bit about Anna Ferris, but more about the girls of sorority as we see that that their transformation. And it very much
Christi Dodge 17:07
speaks to that. I don’t know what the best way to say it, but basically, like the small institution going up against the big institution, and like the underdog story, and I think a lot of people can relate to a time when either you or your group was marginalized, and then how you you, it’s inspirational to watch these girls kind of go up against that and then be successful.
Mike Dodge 17:35
Yeah, I did not participate in the Greek system while at university, so I don’t know if that’s popular or if that’s just for the Hollywood movies that they have the big meeting where everybody you know, oh, you know, we don’t have enough boats, and then wait, your honor that
Christi Dodge 17:53
let’s bring in the donkey to kick the No. Just kidding, I’m mixing No, but I like this.
Mike Dodge 17:58
Yeah, if Hollywood is remaking everything. Why haven’t we remade a donkey field goal kicker movie? I mean, come on, it’s right there. And certainly there’s got to be a division one football team that has a horse or a mule or something as their mascot.
Christi Dodge 18:14
Absolutely, that has to come in in the fourth wait. That’s not in the rules, but it’s not in the rules.
Mike Dodge 18:23
I’ve read the entire rule book from cover to cover, and there’s nothing in here about a kicker has to be a human. Yeah, yeah, it’s right there. And then you could get a filly for the cheerleaders to use. Hey, oh man, this writes itself. Oh my gosh. Get to work. Start typing monkey. Is
Christi Dodge 18:41
there anything you want to talk about, about House funding before we go into our categories? Well, there
Mike Dodge 18:47
are a lot of funny one liners in this and and I have to give credit to the writing staff, because writing funny jokes is harder than it appears, and one that I made a note of but had forgotten and need to write down, because I love this line, the eyes are the nipples of the face. That’s just such a great line from Shelly. Gotta reuse that over and over again, but there’s nerd humor in there. They have a call back to a DIP switch, okay? Except for like, nerds born in the late 60s, early 70s, who knows what a DIP switch is.
Well, apparently, me and the screenwriter, they had a Days of Thunder callback. They used the phrase itchy ass cheeks. I mean, this is, maybe you wouldn’t say, like, high falutin humor, but this is, this is good humor. They brought in some good humor, and I assume that that’s Adam and his dumb buddies sitting around together as a group, coming up with these different lines. But that’s that’s important. This is a fun movie. It’s a funny movie. It has hot kit DeLuca, right? And I think that’s an important part.
Christi Dodge 19:52
Yeah, it’s just a fun movie. It’s just, you know, you got two hours and you want to laugh. And I
Mike Dodge 19:57
have to say, I had seen this movie before. Super fan. RJ had picked it, yeah, and I remembered, okay, but I liked it more on re watching than I remembered. I liked it before. I think part of it is I see Anna Ferris as different than this character, right? She’s in some fun movies like, what’s my number. But of course, she had a long stint on the mom sitcom in general, and probably her personal life with Pratt. Pratt, Pratt is is also affected, but I see her as being more sophisticated in this character. And so I think that, unfortunately colored my memory of this film, right?
Christi Dodge 20:33
And so do you think, I mean, it was 2008 sensibilities. Were there things that made you squeamish in this one. I mean, you just hear Playboy Bunny, and I guess you worry about the misogyny kind of that’s going to be at work.
Mike Dodge 20:49
That is interesting. You bring that up, and we talked about it before we started recording that. Hugh Hefner plays Hugh Hefner in this film, and they refer to the Playboy Mansion, and they have the three girls, Holly, Madison and humandra, and I can’t, sorry, the third one that no one ever remembers, and that was back, I think, at the tail end, where Playboy Bunnies were acceptable. Now, again, I identify as a third wave feminist, where I think women can do whatever they want, including being Playboy Bunnies if they so choose. However, a lot of feminists, I think, in 2024 would probably react pretty strongly to that idea of the Playboy Bunny.
And this film was probably couldn’t be made today because of that, right? I don’t know if it would find quite the receptive audience there. There’s a line in here where she says, I was in girls of the Midwest, girls with GEDs, girls of Charlie Sheen.
So I don’t know if people now would get that gag, that setup, because the girls of blank, right, was a recurring thing for their their issues, and it, you know, at the time, it was still part of pop culture, I did make a note speaking of couldn’t be made today.
Catherine Mcfee, character sings a song, and she uses the R word in the lyrics, which I think Generation Z would probably be very uncomfortable with, and they probably wouldn’t do that today. So there’s parts of this film that is just Happy Madison at its finest, but there’s parts that maybe they they wouldn’t be able to do, right?
Christi Dodge 22:23
So, Bridget mark, quartz marker, something like that, yeah? Um, so Holly Madison, Bridget and then Kendra Wilkinson, okay, three that you were trying to think of earlier, yeah.
Mike Dodge 22:35
And what was the name of their show? Do you remember? Yeah. But isn’t that funny at the time? It was a big deal. It was a big it was an E, maybe it was called
Christi Dodge 22:44
The Girls Next Door, yeah,
Mike Dodge 22:46
and there was at that, I still think in 2008 people would go to the Playboy Mansion for parties, and the grotto was mentioned.
Christi Dodge 22:56
He would pass. I do
Mike Dodge 22:59
think it’s kind of fascinating that a local celebrity had advanced the theory that Hugh Hefner preferred the company of gentlemen,
Christi Dodge 23:10
right? That was always a rumor that I had heard also, which
Mike Dodge 23:14
is interesting given the context of this movie, right? And there’s the subplot where he really did, like Shelley, but then, like, the weird comedian who was somehow a shirtless bartender at the Playboy Mansion had it out for her. I mean, there was, like that a little bit of a villain plot, and so I think that’s kind of fascinating, because at the time, I think they were trying to change the image of the Playboy Mansion from orgy headquarters to something different. So, yeah, I
Christi Dodge 23:44
think that was about the time that his daughter, Christi Hefner, stepped into the CEO role, or editor in chief of Playboy magazine. And I think they were kind of trying to clean it up. And I am curious, because Hefner died in 2017 and I remember it was about a year or two ago, a series came out in which I believe Holly maybe participated in, but it definitely paints Playboy and not the, I guess, pg. I mean, we definitely knew naughty things happened there, but supposedly it was supposed to be with the understanding that the girls were consenting, consenting, yes. And this documentary kind of brings up, you know, some maybe that wasn’t always the case. Unfortunately, yeah,
Mike Dodge 24:35
if you look at the kind of the origins, obviously that’s different than kind of this image, but every, every business has to shift, yeah, you know, and respond to the changing times. And I just think, you know, it’s one of these things where it was a historically important thing, but its time had kind of come and gone. And this film, interestingly, I think timing wise, came out kind of a. The end of that, right? When I was in, you know, elementary school, that was a thing. Somebody would get their brothers Playboy magazine. But now there’s the internet.
Christi Dodge 25:13
Yes, it says it’s exclusively online, formally in print and currently online. But
Mike Dodge 25:19
it’s such a different era, right? When it was racy to have a fully nude woman in a magazine, and now with the internet, the mind boggles things that your kids can see online. It’s just it’s so different. Well,
Christi Dodge 25:37
it’s interesting. It says, After a year long removal of most nude photos in Playboy magazine. The March, April 2017 issue brought back to nudity, so they actually contemplated and executed not publishing naked photos, which just is crazy for Yeah, to think of that’s what Playboy is, right? Yeah, at least to the rest of us right now,
Mike Dodge 26:01
here’s a question kind of sound unrelated, when you passed and when it went from magazine to just online, what about all the women who had a Playboy bunny tattoo? Did they get that fixed up? Changed a little differently?
Christi Dodge 26:15
Well, how would that change, whether it was online or in print? I
Mike Dodge 26:18
don’t know, just because the thing that a representative had gone away. Oh, well, it’s still there.
Christi Dodge 26:23
I know that’s such an iconic image, that bunny. You know how like they have those videos where they’ll show Gen Z, like a rotary phone and stuff. I wonder how many generations you could go where that’s still a recognizable icon, like, I wonder our kids who are in their 20s, would they if we just showed them that, right, that logo, would they know what it is? I bet they would. But then, like, if you went to 1516, year olds, would they know what it is? I mean, it’s just fascinating. Yeah. So
Mike Dodge 26:56
there’s a funny gag in the movie, the long shot where Seth Rogen to infiltrate some Neo Nazis, gets a swastika tattooed on his arm, and then he has it changed to a stick figure because he’s a Jew and doesn’t like the Nazis. And I think my first thought was, you could take that, that profile silhouette bunny with the two ears, and make it into like, the peace sign or something, you know, like, what would you do? Any tattoo artists who have history with this, go ahead and send us an email. What do you do? That’s
Christi Dodge 27:26
there’s a word for Yeah, yeah.
Mike Dodge 27:28
How do you how do you morph it into something different? So, but then also, 2008 really wasn’t that long ago.
Christi Dodge 27:34
It really wasn’t so that’s why I’m just surprised how far we’ve come that. I mean, this was a woman who was using her body to get what she wants,
Mike Dodge 27:44
right? And I think, I mean, you know, again, it’s a broad comedy. It’s not a deep, no assessment of a culture, true, but I think that’s part of what Shelley’s character helps Emma Stone’s character is to find that very difficult balance between, yeah, you know, go ahead and if a guy thinks you’re attractive, use it. You know, you can lean into that right, without it being manipulative. How do you find that line? It’s obviously probably done much more delicately in other films, but it does bring that up, and it
Christi Dodge 28:16
shouldn’t necessarily negate that she has any other qualities that are attractive, like her mind, her thoughts, her heart, because obviously, Shelly cares about all these girls and she wants to help them out. So do you always have to be intelligent, or can you just be a good person, a good kind person who wants to help you know people out, as well as yourself. She was, she was, she started out the process to help herself out because she was homeless, basically. But in the end, she wanted all of them to get to live there,
Mike Dodge 28:49
right? And so, as you mentioned, she doesn’t have as much in the intelligence department, maybe, but she’s persistent. And you know, there’s something to be said for that. So
Christi Dodge 29:01
absolutely, all right, I imagine being a Happy Madison picture and a broad comedy, that we are going to have some head trauma, yeah,
Mike Dodge 29:10
not as much as one would think. So shocked. I’ll broaden the head trauma. There’s a part where Mona bites a guy’s shoulder, which was interesting. Ashley punches Courtney in the boob, which is pretty straightforward for a Happy Madison film. I think that’s in there. But then Shelley does take a spill and hits her head under a table. So we do have a little bit
Christi Dodge 29:32
head. We do have some and I believe there was some romance. So do you have a Smoochie for me? Smoochy, smoochy. Smoochy.
Mike Dodge 29:39
I feel like I missed some but I only have one Smoochie listed. It says, Natalie kisses her Colby. And I wish I remembered what I meant by that. Her Colby.
Christi Dodge 29:49
Is that a new word for a rumor and a driving review? Well, there wasn’t a whole
Mike Dodge 29:56
lot of driving, but Shelley did have a. Yellow. I think it was supposed to be yellow, faded perhaps 1976 Plymouth valari station wagon. Why do I know this? Because I rode around in one of those in 1982 it was white. It had the fake wood paneling on the doors. And I just remember as a kid like looking at that. So there is a metal piece. It was painted faux dark brown wood grain. And then they had other more metal pieces with a light tan wood grain that went around that.
And I remember as a kid, because I wasn’t familiar with the woody wagons, I was like, What in the heck is this doing on the car? Right? Why? Why would you take a perfectly valid painted white, smooth metal and put this crap on it made no sense to me, and now that I know the history, it still makes no sense to me, but that was a piece of crap car. And I did mention, I did they have to Foley the door Creek and the hideous engine sounds. And my guess is the engine sounds were fully because if the engine was that bad off, the car wouldn’t have made it through production. But it’s possible the door Creek was, was, I guess you’d say diegetic. Mm, hmm, alright. So
Christi Dodge 31:13
we go to the numbers. Let’s go to the numbers. Alrighty. Like I said, this was in 2008 and House Bunny had a budget of $25 million domestically, it made 48 million. So kudos to them. They almost doubled it, which I guess would if we believe the premise that marketing is as much as the production. Then they almost broke even worldwide. Helped them out a bit, because they made 71 million. So I would think that would have made this a profitable film, and adjusted for today, that’s like them domestically, making 72 million so I would say a mid range.
It’s not a Marvel movie, but it did well. IMDB gives it a 5.5 out of 10, so they didn’t consider it very high brow Rotten Tomatoes. I guess we’re not really considering it that either enjoyable. Yes, 43% of critics liked it, and 50% of audiences, I guess, gave it. And I don’t know, is it a thumbs up or an eight or nine? I don’t know how. I can’t remember how rotten tomatoes does it? But 50% of audiences considered it fresh it is. Let’s see an hour and 37 minutes.
So how does that what is the moral line you’ve told me before? Remind six minutes, 86 minutes. So that is a little above it’s PG 13, and it is considered just a comedy. It was nominated in 2009 for the Best Comedic Performance at the MTV Movie and TV awards, and unfortunately, it got the Hall of shame award in that in 2008 from the alliance of Women Film Journalists. So maybe that’s the misogyny part that we’re the feminist part that we were talking about. They didn’t appreciate this. Let’s see what we’re gonna watch next week.
Mike Dodge 33:07
Well, I’ve seen this over and over again Groundhog Day. Oh,
Christi Dodge 33:11
and we’ll watch it again and again and again and
Mike Dodge 33:15
again until we get it right. Yeah.
Christi Dodge 33:17
All right, everybody that concludes this episode of dodge movie podcast. Thank you for your patience. We did take a little break because we had some family business to take care of, and everything is doing wonderfully. It was a successful break. I guess that I could say that we had We’re back. We’re going to be bringing you weekly episodes, and we appreciate, like I said, Your listenership and your patience in our little break that we took. Join us next week. Have a good rest of your weekend, but never forget,
Mike Dodge 33:49
dodge has never stopped, and neither are the movies.
Brennan 33:51
Thanks for listening to dodge movie podcast with Christi and Mike dodge of dodge Media Productions to find out more about this podcast than what we do go to dodge Media productions.com Subscribe, share, leave a comment and tell us what we should watch next dodge is never stop and neither do the movies do.