The set-up is simple: airhead bimbo Shelley is conned out of the Playboy mansion for being too old, and ends up as house mother at a sorority house which is due to close because its handful of misfit members are incapable of attracting new members. Fortunately the one thing Shelley is good at is attracting people, so she teaches the girls how to look attractive, and they teach her that there is more to life than appearances.
The script tries to have its cake and eat it by making Shelley dumb as a fencepost while, at the same time, being sharp as a tack. This hardly matters, because Anna Faris makes Shelley a character whose attractiveness (as a person) far outweighs her shallowness (she is indeed vapid in the early stages of the film).
Some of the early humour doesn't work too well, and there are the usual cultural mistranslations for a British audience which is completely unfamiliar with the whole sorority business, but this doesn't matter either: the generalities work just fine even if some of the specifics don't come across.
The message is clear, but not overdone. A lot of the humour is very effective - Faris is a gifted physical comedienne - and this is, in my view, another comedy which succeeds because it has heart. You root for Shelley and the girls because they are inherently decent, nice people, and you hiss the rival sorority (who have designs on taking over the other sorority house) because they have lost sight of the virtues espoused by Shelley and her girls - this, incidentally, gives the movie an unexpected cheer-out-loud moment towards the end).
The single use of the F-word is very funny.
The script tries to have its cake and eat it by making Shelley dumb as a fencepost while, at the same time, being sharp as a tack. This hardly matters, because Anna Faris makes Shelley a character whose attractiveness (as a person) far outweighs her shallowness (she is indeed vapid in the early stages of the film).
Some of the early humour doesn't work too well, and there are the usual cultural mistranslations for a British audience which is completely unfamiliar with the whole sorority business, but this doesn't matter either: the generalities work just fine even if some of the specifics don't come across.
The message is clear, but not overdone. A lot of the humour is very effective - Faris is a gifted physical comedienne - and this is, in my view, another comedy which succeeds because it has heart. You root for Shelley and the girls because they are inherently decent, nice people, and you hiss the rival sorority (who have designs on taking over the other sorority house) because they have lost sight of the virtues espoused by Shelley and her girls - this, incidentally, gives the movie an unexpected cheer-out-loud moment towards the end).
The single use of the F-word is very funny.