The Hot Chick

This article is about the 2002 film. For the song by Uffie, see Hot Chick (Uffie song).

The Hot Chick
The Hot Chick promotional poster
Directed by	Tom Brady
Produced by	Guy Riedel Adam Sandler (executive)
Written by	Tom Brady Rob Schneider
Starring	Rob Schneider Rachel McAdams Anna Faris Matthew Lawrence Eric Christian Olsen
Cinematography	Tim Suhrstedt
Editing by	Peck Prior
Studio	Happy Madison
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures
Release date(s)	December 13, 2002 (2002-12-13)
Running time	101 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$34 million
Box office	$54,639,553

The Hot Chick is a 2002 American comedy film about a teenage girl whose body is magically swapped with that of a 30-year-old criminal. It was directed by Tom Brady and produced by Guy Riedel for Happy Madison and Touchstone Pictures, from a screenplay by Tom Brady and Rob Schneider. The film stars Schneider as Jessica, the beautiful but selfish "hot chick" of the film's title; Rachel McAdams as the criminal; and Anna Faris as Jessica's best friend. Jessica and her cheerleader friends search for Jessica's body while dealing with awkward social situations.

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

The film begins in an Abyssinian castle in 50 BC, where 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 magically trade places while their minds remain where they were.

The rest of the film is set in the modern-day suburban hometown of Jessica Spencer (McAdams), a popular high-school girl, and her friends April (Anna Faris), Keecia (Maritza Murray), and Lulu (Alexandra 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 (Megan Kuhlmann) and a Wiccan girl named Eden (Sam Doumit). After that, Jessica and her friends visit the local mall, where Jessica gets her rival Bianca (Maria-Elena 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, and Clive picks it up after the girls drive away. 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 janitor, she spies on her boyfriend Billy (Lawrence), who truly loves her, and April's boyfriend Jake (Olsen), who has another girlfriend. 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. However, on the evening of the prom, Hildenburg sees a video of Clive robbing a man on the television news and goes to the scene of the crime. After finding 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

• Rob Schneider as Clive Maxtone/Jessica Spencer. Clive is a small-time criminal, and Jessica is a popular high-school girl.
• Rachel McAdams as Jessica Spencer/Clive Maxtone
• Anna Faris as April, Jessica's best friend
• Matthew Lawrence as Billy, Jessica's boyfriend
• Eric Christian Olsen as Jake, April's boyfriend
• Robert Davi as Stan, April's father
• Melora Hardin as Carol Spencer, Jessica's mother
• Angie Stone as Madame Mambuza, a purveyor of African goods
• Matt Weinberg as Booger Spencer, Jessica's cross-dressing younger brother
• Alexandra Holden as Lulu, Jessica's red-headed friend
• Maritza Murray as Keecia "Ling-Ling" Jackson, Jessica's friend, a girl of mixed racial background. She feels embarrassed by her mother's clumsy attempts to bond with her, but she learns to accept her mother and her own identity by the end of the film.
• Tia Mowry as Venetia, a high-school girl, Sissie's twin sister
• Tamera Mowry as Sissie, a high-school girl, Venetia's twin sister
• Michelle Branch as As Club DJ
• Jodi Long as Keecia's enthusiastic but socially inept Korean mother
• Lee Garlington as Ms. Marjorie Bernard, the vice principal of Jessica's school
• Leila Kenzle as Julie
• Fay Hauser as Mrs. Thomas
• Michael O'Keefe as Richard Spencer, Jessica's father
• Sam Doumit as Eden, a Wiccan girl
• Megan Kuhlmann as Hildenburg, a heavyset girl with an interest in chemistry
• Maria-Elena Laas as Bianca, Jessica's social rival from another school

Casting

Singers Ashlee Simpson and Michelle Branch each make their feature-film debut with cameo roles.

Schneider's mother Pilar appears as a judge of the cheerleading contest.

Cultural references

• When Bianca is framed for shoplifting, she is taken away by two security guards. One of the guards says to her "Let's go, Winona," a reference to actress Winona Ryder who was arrested for shoplifting at a Saks Fifth Avenue store.
• Surveillance footage of the real Clive in Jessica's body, beating up and robbing a man, is shown on the evening news. After doing so, he leaves, as the beaten man reaches up crying "Why?!" in a reference to the Nancy Kerrigan attack of the early/mid 90's.

Release

The Hot Chick was originally Rated R, but a few scenes were edited out in order to receive the PG-13 Rating.^{[citation needed]}

Before the film was released theatrically previews for the DVD indicated the title had been "Miss Popularity".^{[citation needed]}

Reception

Box office

The film opened at #5 in the U.S. Box office in the weekend of December 13, 2002, raking in $7,401,146 USD, averaging $3,338 for the first 2,217 theatres where it was shown. It went on to earn a total worldwide gross of $54,639,553.

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 21% based on 80 reviews.

Critic Richard Roeper damned the film with faint praise saying "it's in color. And, it was mostly in focus." People who have seen the film have given it good reviews and it is a popular movie.

Home media

The Hot Chick was released January 25, 2005. The DVD featured the deleted scenes that would have made the film an R, including an alternate ending.

External links

• The Hot Chick at the Internet Movie Database
• The Hot Chick at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Hot Chick at Box Office Mojo