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Anna Faris is a genius. Cut in the classic Marilyn Monroe mold of the funny beauty, but possessing just the right amount of self-awareness, she has the mysterious power of turning even terrible lines into bona fide howlers. The key to her comedy is deranged conviction, a schtick that lends itself well to idiots (Just Friends), mega-potheads (Smiley Face), stars of bad spoofs (the Scary Movies) and indescribably unhinged characters (her polymorphously perverse predatory lesbian in May).

If only she were in every terrible comedy. Or better yet, if only she did more decent movies.

As with a lot of Faris’ films, The House Bunny might well have shut down if she hadn’t become attached. Faris plays an orphan-turned-vacuous Playboy bunny who’s booted from the Mansion due to her skyrocketing age (27).

Homeless, she winds up the house mother to a crumbling sorority comprised of a handful of college undesirables: homely, heavily pierced and/or meek, with not a plastic evil bitch among them. Faris vows to get them the pledges necessary to stave off their destruction by mutating them all into hotties. They in turn try to unleash her inner brainiac, particularly once she finds herself on dates with a smart, nice guy (Colin Hanks) not so into the Maxim definition of romance.

The House Bunny was written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, who somehow made The Taming of the Shrew feminist with 10 Things I Hate About You and mixed image and smarts in Legally Blonde. That seems to have been the idea with The House Bunny, but its purportedly progessive message—embrace outer beauty but to thine own self be true—gets perverted by the film’s own obsession with physical beauty. It needs more jokes like the one in which a housemate pointedly tells her Abercrombie object of desire that, no, she definitely doesn’t know loads and loads about the Aztecs.

Nor does it help that the director knows nothing of comic timing, even if his star does. Faris would keep The House Bunny afloat singlehandedly even if she didn’t actually have some help from Emma Stone (Superbad) as her bespectacled and most gung-ho charge. Almost Faris’ equal, Stone is prone to launch into movie-halting monologues about dressing up mice like presidents and the like. Like Faris, she has no qualms about looking stupid. If only the film they’re in together worried more about it than they do.

WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD. Last fall, after eons of being razzed for ignoring the real world, studios released several bluntly topical films, only to see them each tank due in some part to the fact that they were all basically terrible. The independent terrorist thriller Traitor springs from the same general impulse, but it actually tries not to be awful.

Based on a story partially conceived by Steve Martin (yes, that one), Traitor grants us a backstage pass to the underworld of Muslim terrorists, with one of New Hollywood’s golden boys as our tour guide. Don Cheadle plays a Sudanese-born American citizen whose distaste for the States leads him to join the newest plot to strike our country within our borders.

Relax—Cheadle’s actually a super secret CIA operative, his true motives so hidden only one suit (Jeff Daniels) knows about it. And so the stage is set for a race against time, as Cheadle has to maintain apparent loyalty to his cell, fend off the pursuing feds (including an empathetic Guy Pearce) and save the world (or at least a dozen or so buses each carrying a bomb-wielding fundamentalist).

Traitor itself has its hands similarly full, and like Cheadle it exudes not panic but a disarming calm, even as it masks roiling inner turmoil. Writer-director Jeff Nachmanoff previously co-wrote the screenplay to the craptacular global-warming disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow, but Traitor is remarkably level-headed. He doesn’t reveal Cheadle’s true identity till almost an hour in, spending that time making sure last year’s The Kite Runner adaptation (which also featured Three Kings’ always terrific Saïd Taghmaoui) isn’t the only American film to pay serious attention to the Muslim faith.

Even if he’s only pretending to be a terrorist, Cheadle still worships Allah, and Traitor takes not only his faith seriously but also the motives of the ne’er-do-wells with whom he fraternizes. These are three-dimensional characters whose slights the film addresses, even if it doesn’t agree with their reactions.

Traitor treats serious issues—can you sacrifice the few to save the many? Is the term “hero” really meaningless?—with the complexity they deserve. It’s a shame they’re tethered to a plot that frequently strains credulity, even as it offers food for thought. Fortunately, it also has Cheadle downplaying his star power, staying emotionally remote while never once succumbing to Oscar bait.

Not Reviewed

Babylon A.D.
Vin Diesel is apparently still alive. (Opens Fri., Aug. 29.)

College
Dude gets dumped. Dude goes to college orientation.Dude gets laid. (Opens Fri., Aug. 29.)

Disaster Movie
Explosions and bad jokes! (Opens Fri., Aug. 29.)

What We Do Is Secret
Shane West is a glam rock star, thus fulfilling his masturbatory fantasies. (Opens Fri., Aug. 29.)