Ten Years On: Where's the Respect for Emma Stone's Iconic "House Bunny" Music Video

The House Bunny returns to Netflix in Australia and New Zealand on 1 August.

Over the past month, the internet has been swarmed by ten-year anniversary articles for The Dark Knight, which, yes, was a very good and important film from 2008, but wasn’t The House Bunny.

A decade ago, the Anna Faris comedy The House Bunny also opened in cinemas and proved Faris had talents that extended far beyond the very limited constraints of the Scary Movie saga.

It didn’t win any Oscars, or define a new era of superhero cinema, or flip an 18-wheeler just because it could, but The House Bunny gave us something The Dark Knight never even attempted: an iconic music video for "I Know What Boys Like", performed in part by Emma Stone.

For those who have never seen The House Bunny, or don’t remember it, or don’t believe it’s a real thing (it is), it stars Faris as Shelley, a model who moves into a college sorority of dorks after being evicted from the Playboy Mansion.

Throughout the film, she learns life lessons from the dorks—played by Stone, Kat Dennings, Katharine McPhee and Rumer Willis—and she too teaches them how to have fun and attract dudes. Colin Hanks is also there.

Watch the trailer—which wasn’t even uploaded by Sony Pictures Entertainment in the right aspect ratio; the disrespect!—below.

Like all great works of cinema, the end credits for The House Bunny roll alongside a music video in which the cast sings along to a bouncy pop song while dozens of extras clap along. In this case, it’s the members of the Zeta Alpha Zeta house singing a cover of The Waitresses' "I Know What Boys Like", and they begin their performance by asking, "Where my zetas at?" over and over again.

(This particular call-and-no-response has been stuck in my head since the film’s release in August 2008.)

With The House Bunny arriving on Netflix on 1 August, the time is ripe to revisit The House Bunny, and, in particular, this final crowning moment, which features a pre-fame (yet post-Superbad) Emma Stone, cementing her icon status by going HAM in an absolutely absurd scenario.

You may scoff. But look how happy and enthusiastic Emma Stone is, just to share the screen with such burgeoning female comic talent.

She is loving this.

And the pièce de résistance:

We choose to believe Sony cast her in Easy A the following year off the back of that last move alone.

Given how Stone would later earn acclaim for her musical performances in La La Land and the Broadway production of Cabaret (not to mention her cameo in Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping), this early on-screen musical rendition deserves to be entered into the American Film Institute archives.

At the very least, you can honour her by watching the official music video above. It was published by Sony in August of 2008 as well, and has only been viewed (as of this writing) 7,538 times.

We spent the last decade failing The House Bunny. Let’s do better over the next ten years.

Header Image: Sony Pictures