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Faris' funny 'Bunny'

IT MIGHT wear its derivative, 'Legally Blonde'-meets-'Mean Girls' trappings like a rhinestone thong, but strip away the second-hand attire, and 'The House Bunny' still manages to stand on its own two skyscraper heels thanks to the comic force of nature that is Anna Faris.

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While her title character - a former Playboy Bunny who becomes house mother to a sorry sorority - borrows liberally from Judy Holliday and Marilyn Monroe, Faris also makes it her own in an irrepressible turn that's hard to resist.

That performance should handily extend Columbia's summer comedy winning streak in a vehicle that plays to males and females, packing some real sleeper potential. The studio releases the film on Friday.

Faris, who strutted her comic stuff in such movies as 'Lost in Translation' and the 'Scary Movie' franchise, as well as on 'Friends' as the surrogate mother of Monica and Chandler's baby, goes for the gold here as the clueless Shelley, who's one of Hugh Hefner's favourites (and Hef's on hand to prove it) until she's turfed from the Playboy Mansion upon turning 27.

That's, like, 59 in Bunny years, Shelley's told, and she briefly finds herself out on the street before landing a gig transforming the socially challenged residents of the Zeta Alpha Zeta sorority house into bona fide babes.

In the process, while spouting words of wisdom like 'My heart was pounding like a nail,' she learns a thing or two from the sisters about the importance of being true to yourself.

If the formula sounds awfully familiar, at least writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith elected to rip themselves off, having penned 'Legally Blonde.'

Although moments of inspiration are few and far between, director Fred Wolf (in a vast improvement over his first feature, 'Strange Wildnerness'), keeps things bouncing along at an agreeable pace, while allowing Faris plenty of wiggle room.