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Film
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The Hot Chick
Continuing to refine his brand of crude, though hilarious, humor, Rob Schneider gets trapped in a girls body, and even worse, a woman gets trapped in his.
Friday, December 13, 2002
By Daniel Baig
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The Hot Chick looks like it could have been shot by a ten-year-old paraplegic on a heavy dosage of Ritalin. The camera didn’t move once. Visually, this is bare-bones, shot/reaction shot, shot/reaction shot “style,” and there’s that weird feeling of emptiness surrounding the central action which marked both Rob Schneider’s first starring opus, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, and the early films of his executive producer, Adam Sandler. To wit, a ONE-pump gas station – full service, no less! – in the middle of a suburban Los Angeles neighborhood curiously devoid of people other than the main characters.
The humor consists of dick jokes, flatulence jokes, jokes about people taking nasty falls, jokes about people who talk funny, jokes about people getting hit in the head, and jokes about guys (which includes girls trapped in guys’ bodies) getting kicked in the crotch. Oh, and more dick jokes. And jokes about people taking nasty falls and THEN getting hit in the head.
For those who pride themselves on sophisticated, discerning taste, this might not seem like the proper cup of tea, however it is almost guaranteed that even the stuffiest cinema goers will laugh their ass off for an hour-and-a-half.
In fact, you just may be laughing so hard you’ll be embarassed, then stop – only to realize nobody cares or could even tell, as they are all loudly laughing their asses off.
The Hot Chick is crude, juvenile, sophomoric, and absolutely hysterical.
Actually, this is being a tad unfair with the “juvenile” and “sophomoric” tags (though not with “crude”). Because there’s a truly surprisingly subversive undercurrent running throughout The Hot Chick speaking to and commenting on the more-fluid-than-rigid nature of sexuality and gender. Really. (Gay and Lesbian Studies majors will find ample treasure in it to plunder for thesis papers.) But you don’t have to worry about any of that if you don’t want to.
Instead, just admire the terrific central comedic performances. Rob Schneider is truly a gifted clown. Watching him successfully pretending to be a girl who’s unsuccessfully pretending to be a guy is to watch a genuinely impressive feat of believable acting.
“Rob Schneider” being the only words above the title, it’s not surprising that we get to see far more of him playing high school cheerleader Jessica trapped in a male body than we do of that male trapped in Jessica’s body, played by Rachel McAdams. Nevertheless, McAdams more than holds her own in her relative handful of scenes portraying the lowlife petty criminal who accepts his newfound exterior far more readily and willingly than does the hot chick hers.
And completing the trio of winning performers holding the film together is Anna Faris of the Scary Movies, looking so much prettier here as the natural blond she is than she did in those Scream spoofs. As Jessica’s best friend, trying to balance sympathy for her fellow cheerleader’s predicament with a not unnatural fascination with it (and a burning curiosity to see, you know, “it”) along with growing romantic feelings for this half-new/half-old person in her life, who seems to be just what she’s been looking for – a loyal best friend who comes with a penis –, Faris is just about perfect.
There is one notable exception to The Hot Chick’s overall strong performances, and it comes in the guise of its executive producer, Adam Sandler himself. Every time he appears onscreen (which thankfully occurs no more than four times), he sucks the comedic energy right off the screen. His “characterization” of a white rasta man doesn’t quite approach the depth found in someone playing a background part in a sketch in the last half-hour of an especially uninspired Saturday Night Live.
(Also inappropriately cast, but only because he looks about eight years too old to be playing a high school senior, is Eric Christian Olsen as Faris’ two-timing boyfriend.)
Although the words “juvenile” and “sophomoric” were used above, it should be pointed out that those adjectives, while apt, do not also preclude “clever” and “imaginative,” both of which The Hot Chick sometimes is. As an example of the former, the film makes timely jabs and references to Winona Ryder. Later on, a joke, more generically targeting “camp counselors” in the movie’s trailer, has been modified for a more topical riff on priestly pedophilia. So in order to help Touchstone Pictures with their quote gather here’s the ready-made blurb: “The Hot Chick is both funny and ripped straight from the headlines!”
Speaking to the point about imagination, The Hot Chick’s opening sequence certainly catches one off-guard. For a few seconds it looks as if you’re being shown a trailer for another film first, as what first came on the screen and over the speakers appeared to be the beginning of another The Mummy sequel. Although the words Happy Madison “carved” into computer-generated stone soon reassures us that this is indeed the correct feature, rather than jump right into SoCal suburbia what followed was an intro which appeared to have been shot on the set of The Scorpion King when nobody was looking, handily matching, as it turns out, that summer masterpiece’s levels of production design, acting, and humor.
| Two final things worthy of mention: The Hot Chick closes not with the by now seemingly de rigueur series of flubs and outtakes, but rather what is basically one long outtake, not especially funny, but almost fascinating, in the car wreck sense, in which Schneider is unable to buckle down and shoot a moment of dialogue.
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And, lastly, as is the case with most of Schneider’s work, there’s an overall spirit of nice-ness and tolerance permeating The Hot Chick. Interestingly, it means that in none of the many situations where in the real world homophobia and gay-bashing would almost certainly be expected – scuzzy “guy” comes on to a decidedly heterosexual high school football player, scuzzy “guy” bends over and stares at the decidedly heterosexual guy next to him at a urinal’s handling of his “equipment”, etc. – here, violence, and even the word “fag,” never make appearances.
Rob Schneider: pointing the way to a more humane world, through dick jokes.
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