The Hot Chick is a 2002 American fantasy comedy film directed by Tom Brady (in his feature length directorial debut), written by Brady and Rob Schneider, and starring Schneider, Rachel McAdams, Anna Faris, Matthew Lawrence, Eric Christian Olsen, Robert Davi and Michael O'Keefe. The film follows Jessica Spencer, a mean-spirited cheerleader who switches bodies with incompetent criminal Clive Maxtone. When Jessica discovers that the switch was caused by a pair of enchanted earrings she had stolen, she enlists the help of her friends to get the earrings back together before the switch becomes permanent.
Adam Sandler served as executive producer and made an uncredited cameo appearance as the Mambuza Bongo Player, a character based on one played by Schneider on Saturday Night Live. Principal photography began in March 2002 in Los Angeles and concluded in May.
The Hot Chick was theatrically released in the United States by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution on December 13, 2002, and grossed $54.6 million against a $34 million budget. It received generally negative reviews from critics.
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Plot
In 50 BC, in an Abyssinian castle, Princess Nawa 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 a modern-day suburban town in California, Jessica Spencer is the beautiful but mean-spirited "hot chick". Her closest friends are April, Keecia and Lulu. April is Jessica's best friend, and all four girls are cheerleaders. At school one day, Jessica pulls a prank on an overweight girl named Hildenburg by having her dress as a cheerleader from a rival school during a pep rally, and makes enemies with a Wiccan girl named Eden. After that, she and her friends visit the local mall, where Jessica uses her charm to get free gelato, gets her rival Bianca into trouble by planting merchandise on her to set her up for shoplifting, and finds the earrings in an African-themed store owned by Madame Mambuza. The earrings are not for sale, but Jessica steals them anyway.
Shortly afterward, small-time, 30-year-old criminal Clive Maxtone robs a nearby gas station. When Jessica and her friends stop and mistake him for an employee, he services their car to avoid raising suspicion. She accidentally drops one of the earrings on the ground, the girls drive away, and Clive picks up the earring. In their respective homes that evening, 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 senior 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, Madame Mambuza explains how the earrings work and tells the girls they must find the other earring soon or the change will become permanent at the next full moon. During this time, Jessica charms and other feminine skills were useless in the mall, and at the local club, Instant Tang, during which she gets in a fight with someone who flirts with Eden, and learns how to urinate while standing.
Meanwhile, Jessica is hired for two jobs while secretly living with April. At her own home, where she pretends to be a foreigner working as a gardener, her parents tell her about their marital problems and she helps them rekindle their sex life, while watching her younger brother, Booger, try on her clothes, much to her dismay. At school, while cleaning the boys' locker room as a custodian, she eavesdrops on her boyfriend Billy, who truly loves her unconditionally, and April's boyfriend Jake, who has been cheating on her. Faced with Jake's infidelity, April begins to fall in love with Jessica (although she's still stuck in Clive's body), who agrees to take her to the prom.
Cast
Cameos
Wes Takahashi, former animator and visual effects supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, makes a cameo appearance as a news reporter. Schneider's mother Pilar and Brady's wife Lisa both appear as judges of the cheerleading competition.
Production
Filming took place at El Segundo High School in El Segundo, Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, and University High School in Los Angeles. Speaking on the film, Rob Schneider commented: "No man is a hundred-percent masculine and no woman is a hundred-percent feminine – we're all just somewhere on the scale there. So what I tried to do was just play it with an innocence and gentleness, and then find some physical keys to lock-in on."
Release
The Hot Chick was originally rated R, but several scenes were edited out to receive the broader PG-13 rating.
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.
Critical response
The Hot Chick received generally negative reviews by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film had an approval rating of 21% based on reviews from 80 critics, with an average score of 3.90/10. The critical consensus read: "The Hot Chick's one-note concept gets stretched thin, and a lot of the jokes fall flat." On Metacritic, as of October 2020, the film had a score of 29 out 100 based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F.
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 further criticized: "it's in color. And, it was mostly in focus... I really can't say any more for it beyond that."
Dennis Harvey of Variety magazine wrote: "At best routinely assembled—at worst barely competent. The slapstick is labored, and the bigger setpieces flat."
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 on VHS and DVD on May 13, 2003 by Buena Vista Home Entertainment (under the Touchstone Home Entertainment label). The DVD featured the deleted scenes that would have given the film an R rating, including an alternate ending.
