The Hot Chick

The Hot Chick is a 2002 American teen comedy film about a teenage girl whose body is magically swapped with that of a criminal. It was directed by Tom Brady and produced by Rob Schneider and Carr D'Angelo for Happy Madison and Touchstone Pictures, and written by Brady and Rob Schneider. The film stars Schneider as the criminal and Rachel McAdams as Jessica, who, together with her cheerleader friends, search for Jessica's body while dealing with awkward social situations.

The Hot Chick
Theatrical release poster
Directed byTom Brady
Produced byJohn Schneider
Carr D'Angelo
Written byTom Brady
Rob Schneider
Starring
Music byJohn Debney
CinematographyTim Suhrstedt
Edited byPeck Prior
Production
company
Touchstone Pictures
Happy Madison
Distributed byBuena Vista Pictures
Release date
  • December 13, 2002 (2002-12-13)
Running time
104 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$34 million[1]
Box office$54.6 million[1]

Adam Sandler served as executive producer and has a small role in the film as the Mambuza Bongo Player, a character based on one played by Schneider in a Saturday Night Live sketch. Sisters Tia and Tamera Mowry and singers Ashlee Simpson, Angie Stone, and Michelle Branch also had small roles. Parts of the film were shot at Redondo Union High School and El Segundo High School.

Plot

In 50 BC, in an Abyssinian castle, a princess uses a pair of enchanted earrings to escape an arranged marriage by swapping bodies with a slave girl. When each woman wears one of the earrings, their bodies are magically swapped while their minds remain in place.

In her modern-day suburban home, Jessica Spencer (McAdams) is a beautiful but selfish "hot chick". Jessica's closest friends are April (Faris), Keecia (Murray), and Lulu (Holden). April is Jessica's best friend, and all four girls are cheerleaders. At school one day, Jessica makes fun of an overweight girl named Hildenburg (Kuhlmann) and a Wiccan girl named Eden (Doumit). After that, Jessica and her friends visit the local mall, where Jessica gets her rival Bianca (Laas) into trouble and finds the earrings in an African-themed store. The earrings are not for sale, so Jessica steals them.

Shortly afterward, a small-time criminal named Clive (Schneider) robs a nearby gas station. When Jessica and her friends stop there and mistake him for an employee, he services their car to avoid raising suspicion. Jessica accidentally drops one of the earrings on the ground, the girls drive away, and Clive picks up the earring. That evening, in their respective homes, Jessica and Clive put on their earrings. When they wake up the next morning, each of them is trapped in the other's body. This is especially difficult for Jessica, who has a cheering competition and the school prom coming up soon.

After Jessica convinces her friends of who she is, they help her investigate the body swap. Hildenburg, Eden, and Bianca are all innocent, Hildenburg and Eden join Jessica after she apologizes to them, and Eden finds a picture of the earrings on the internet. When the girls return to the African store, the shopkeeper explains how the earrings work and tells the girls they must find the other earring soon or the change will become permanent.

Meanwhile, Jessica is hired for two jobs while secretly living with April. At her own home, where she works as a gardener, her parents tell her about their marital problems and she helps them rekindle their sex life. At school, while cleaning the boys' locker room as a custodian, she spies on her boyfriend Billy (Lawrence), who truly loves her, and April's boyfriend Jake (Olsen), who has another girlfriend Monique (Simpson). Faced with Jake's infidelity, April begins to fall in love with Jessica, who agrees to take her to the prom. At the cheering competition, Jessica signals romantically to Billy while disguised as the school mascot, but when the head of her suit falls off, he becomes confused and leaves with Bianca.

During this time, Clive has been using Jessica's body to make money from men, including Billy, who gives him his money and car, believing he is Jessica. On the evening of the prom, Hildenburg sees a video of Clive robbing a man on the TV news, goes to the scene of the crime, and finds a business card for the club where Clive works as a pole dancer. She informs Jessica at the prom, and the girls go to the club. When they find Clive, Jessica steals his earring and puts it on herself along with the other one. With the two earrings now on the same person, Jessica's and Clive's bodies return to their original owners. After Jessica makes up with Billy, the film ends with the school's graduation ceremony, followed by a scene in which Clive, running from the law and still dressed in lingerie, is abducted by a bartender who believes he is a homosexual.

Cast

Casting

Singers Ashlee Simpson and Michelle Branch each make their feature film debut with cameo roles. Wes Takahashi, former animator and visual effects supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, makes a cameo appearance as a news reporter.[2] Schneider's mother Pilar appears as a judge of the cheerleading contest.

Soundtrack
  1. "Starlight" – Zed
  2. "Mess" – Custom
  3. "Take Tomorrow" – Butch Walker
  4. "Mongoose" – Fu Manchu
  5. "Firecracker" – Roxy Saint
  6. "Ash To Ash" – Loudermilk
  7. "You're Pretty Good Looking" – Whirlwind Heat
  8. "I See You Baby" – Groove Armada, Gram'ma Funk
  9. "Stick Em (Rock Like This)" – Liquid Todd, Dr. Luke
  10. "Get Into Something" – Jenē
  11. "Do Whatcha Gonna Do" – Len
  12. "That's What Girls Do" – No Secrets

Release

The Hot Chick was originally rated R, but several scenes were edited out in order to receive the broader PG-13 rating.[3] The R version was classified 12A in Britain, maintaining the same rating given to the PG-13 theatrical version.

Before the film was released theatrically, previews indicated the title would be Miss Popularity.

Reception

Box office

The film opened at #5 at the U.S. box office on the weekend of December 13–15, 2002, taking in US$7,401,146, averaging $3,338 across the 2,217 theatres where it was shown. It went on to earn a total worldwide gross of $54,639,553.[1]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 22% based on reviews from 83 critics. The critical consensus reads: "The Hot Chick's one-note concept gets stretched thin, and a lot of the jokes fall flat."[4] On Metacritic the film has a score of 29% based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[5] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F.[6]

Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper gave the film two thumbs way down. Ebert gave the film half a star (out of a possible four), declaring, "The MPAA rates this PG-13. It is too vulgar for anyone under 13, and too dumb for anyone over 13." Roeper panned the film saying "it's in color. And, it was mostly in focus."[7]

Dennis Harvey of Variety magazine wrote: "At best routinely assembled—at worst barely competent. The slapstick is labored, and the bigger setpieces flat."[8]

Accolades

Rob Schneider was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Actor of the Decade for his performance in the film.

Home media

The Hot Chick was released May 13, 2003 on VHS and DVD. The DVD featured the deleted scenes that would have made the film an R, including an alternate ending.[9]

gollark: Wait, why am I capitalizing forth?
gollark: FORTH isn't FORTRAN.
gollark: It's... FORTH or something insane like that.
gollark: no.
gollark: > being productive

See also

References
  1. The Hot Chick at Box Office Mojo
  2. "Subject: Wes Ford Takahashi". Animators' Hall of Fame. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  3. "Arguing their case against NC-17". Los Angeles Times. 1 July 2003. When Disney’s “The Hot Chick” got an R, star Rob Schneider wooed the appeals board, which overturned the ruling.
  4. "The Hot Chick". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 2020-04-04.
  5. "The Hot Chick". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2020-04-04.
  6. "HOT CHICK, THE (2002) B+". CinemaScore. Archived from the original on 2018-12-20.
  7. Ebert, Roger (December 13, 2002). "The Hot Chick movie review & film summary (2002)". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2020-04-04.
  8. Harvey, Dennis (December 7, 2002). "The Hot Chick". Variety.
  9. "The Hot Chick". Amazon.com.
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