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THE HOUSE BUNNY According to the Internet Movie Database, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has appeared as himself in over 150 movies, TV shows and video productions, including episodes of Laverne & Shirley, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Sex and the City. Personally, I don't think he'll ever top his cameo in the Roman Empire segment of Mel Brooks' History of the World: Part I, but he does enjoys more screen time in The House Bunny. The 82-year-old Hef serves as a father figure of sorts to Shelley Darlingson (Anna Faris), a Playboy Bunny who lives at his legendary mansion. But right after her 27th birthday (59 in Bunny years, she's told), she's kicked out of the house, although it's not long before she finds herself with a new gig: serving as a house mother to the socially awkward girls from the Zeta Alpha Zeta sorority. Soon, she's instructing them on how to attract boys while they're teaching her how to depend on more than just her looks. This was co-written by the same women (Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith) who penned Legally Blonde, and their roots are clearly showing. This is basically an inferior version of that Reese Witherspoon hit, and it isn't even up to the standards of Amanda Bynes' similarly plotted Sydney White. But Faris, a talented comedienne, strikes the proper airhead notes, and Lutz and Smith take care to feed her some funny lines now and then. Incidentally, Hefner was 27 – the same age as Shelley in the movie – when the first issue of Playboy (featuring Marilyn Monroe as the centerfold) hit the streets. Apparently, 27 is 59 in Bunny years, but, considering the man's still-swinging ways, 82 is 27 in Hef years. **
STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS Pop quiz, hotshot. Which line of dialogue does not appear in a Star Wars movie? A) "May the Force be with you." B) "Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son." C) "So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause." D) "Does sweet'um want some num-nums?" I wish I could say that the correct answer is D), but all four lines appear in one installment or another, with that atrocious final snippet appearing in this animated eyesore. The early word was that only Star Wars fanatics would enjoy this addition to the franchise, but that's grossly inaccurate: As someone who was 11 years old when the original film hit theaters back in 1977 and thus has always considered it a rite-of-passage milestone, I was nauseated upon stumbling out of George Lucas' latest sorry attempt to squeeze every last penny out of this franchise. Set in the period between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, this focuses on the war that helped the evil Empire take over the galaxy. The plot concerns the efforts of Anakin Skywalker and his sassy apprentice, a teen named Ahsoka Tano (Lucasfilm, meet the Disney Channel), to rescue Jabba the Hutt's kidnapped baby boy (nicknamed "Stinky") from Count Dooku and his posse. What sort of nonsense is this? The CGI animation, which director Dave Filoni states was inspired by both Japanese anime and Thunderbirds' puppets, is harsh on the eyes and proves to be aesthetically unpleasing. A couple of action sequences manage to elevate this out of the realm of utter despair, but for the most part, this is curdled cinema that even the fans will upchuck. *1/2
TRAITOR Tackling terrorism on screen is a dicey proposition, often resulting in a push-pull dynamic of trying to make an entertaining crowd-pleaser that nevertheless can't forget its civic duty to present its ugly subject matter in an honest and illuminating light. Traitor tries for that line drive right down the middle and, consequently, ends up as a middle-of-the-road movie. Don Cheadle (who also co-produced) stars as Samir Horn, born of an American mother and a Sudanese father. Understandably haunted by the childhood memory of watching Pop blown up by a car bomb, the Muslim-American Samir is now an international arms dealer who becomes mixed up with a fanatical Middle Eastern outfit plotting the usual death and destruction against American civilians. With his quick-tempered partner Max Archer (Neal McDonough) in tow, FBI agent Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce) chases Samir across the globe with all the zeal of Inspector Javert hoofing it after Jean Valjean, not realizing there's more to his quarry than he initially believes. Operating from a story he co-wrote with Steve Martin, director Jeffrey Nachmanoff works hard to present Samir Horn as what most Americans will consider that most outrageous of characters: a sympathetic terrorist. It's a risky approach aided by Cheadle's understated performance, but it's rendered null and void by a twist that largely turns this into a standard thriller. Still, the film is overall more thoughtful than jingoistic, even if it does little to advance audience understanding of the War on Terror and its multi-tentacled morality plays. **1/2