It's a fairy tale. So suggests The House Bunny's opening narrative, spoken while the camera hovers over the pages of a story book. Or maybe it's more like a children's book that answers a perplexing question -- like "Where Do Birds Go in the Winter?" -- except this movie solves a riddle that might mystify adults: "Where do bunnies go when Hef kicks them to the curb?"

The morning after Shelley Darlington's 27th birthday, the mansion's mother hen gets a mysteriously vague letter from Hef telling her she has two hours to vacate the premises. Not the birthday present she'd been hoping for -- to be named Miss November. Always a pictorial pinup (see Girls With GEDs) but never a centerfold -- which for her would be an elite badge of bunnyhood: "It says, I'm naked and I'm in the middle of a magazine." Hef's bartender Marvin thinks it might be because she's 59 in bunny years. She's forced to shoo off in the same rusty station wagon that dropped her off from the orphanage (yes, hers is a hard luck story) and leave her pink Prius and her cat Pooter behind. (Actually Pooter preferred to be left behind.)

But then a blessed twist of fate guides her to a college campus peppered with "little playboy mansions." And her new home and calling as a sorority house mother for a sad-sack bunch of misfits à la She's All That, Princess Diaries and every other ugly duckling teenage fairy tale movie that's been made. But here's the thing: even though The House Bunny's plot is as obvious and skimplified as the cotton-candy pink bustier showcasing Shelley's expertly "engineered" bosoms, there's no denying the hilarity of the comically engineered body beneath. As you might expect from Legally Blonde writer Kirsten Smith, this geeks-to-beauty tale ventures beyond your average gags and one liners. Though there are still a few groan-worthy quips, they're outweighed by the script's savvy and spontaneous satire of bunnies, sorority girls, makeover movies, and of course, itself.

It's a film that gets its freak on. And that's a good thang. Like Shelley's satanic-sounding method of memorizing names. (Next time you're introduced to someone new, repeat their name aloud, but growl it like Linda Blair in the Exorcist, or just swig a beer and evilly burp it.) Or one of my favorite Zetas, Carrie Mae. She's worked hard to stay in college for nine years to avoid returning to her trailer in Idaho. She also has her own special sound and saunter. Think throaty drag queen and Neanderthal lumberjack.

The cast behind the wackiness includes real-live Playboy princesses, Beverly D'Angelo and American Idol's Katharine McPhee. And then there's Anna Faris. You've likely spotted the Scary Movie franchise vet on the big and small screen in Just Friends, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Entourage, and you may recall, Lost in Translation. She's cute as a bunny. A new generation's Goldie Hawn (some say) with a Marilyn Monroe gooiness. But behind her Kewpie doll cluelessness lies comic genius. The House Bunny was her brainchild. And on her skyscraper heels she easily supports what might have amounted to an unsteady plot on another set of legs.

Legally Blonde with a side of Mean Girls, Clueless with a dose of The Exorcist ...

Whatever movie mash you make of it, House Bunny, you had me at Haar-mooo-nyyy.

Grade: B+