The Hot Chick

A popular, virgin-esque prom queen beeyatch (Britney??) wakes up one morning to find that she has been transported into the skin of an ugly 40-year old criminal, only a few days before her major cheerleading meet. After convincing some of her friends that she is, in fact, inside the body of this man, the posse set out to find the dude who now possesses her original figure. Cheap laughs ensue.

Rob Schneider comedies are a lot like Adam Sandler comedies: you either like the jokes and dumbie characters or you don’t. Considering that both actors/comedians come from TV’s “Saturday Night Live”, where one-joke characters are the norm, are good friends and consistently appear in each others movies (Sandler also produces most of Rob’s stuff), it’s no coincidence that their humor is similar on many levels. Having said that, I’m generally a Schneider, and even more so…Sandler, fan. I don’t mind stupid characters and half-assed stories as long as the gist of it can make me laugh like the putz that I am, and most of the time, their films do the job. THE ANIMAL, Schneider’s last attempt at making me laugh, didn’t click for me. Going into THE HOT CHICK, which according to its lame-ass trailer was about as unfunny as the latter flick, I was really expecting to sit there with little to smile about other than the hope of a couple of “tit shots” flying my way at some point. Surprised was I to find that not only did the film not contain any “tit shots” (although Schneider does flash us some ass at one point), but it actually made me laugh every now and again. In fact, dammit…I’m gonna say…it was pretty funny once it got going. Yes, the whole movie is basically a one-trick pony (adding insult to that injury, Sandler shows up in a cameo as the “you put your weed in there” guy from the old days at SNL-the ultimate of one-joke skits…and a funny one at that!), but the sight of Schneider hopping around like a fruitcake made me smile…what can I say. I even laughed out loud a couple of times.

And even though the film definitely outstays its welcome (it felt like two hours), features a couple of useless and unfunny subplots (the whole thing about the black chick with the Vietnamese mom should have been 86’ed in the editing room, as well as the overdone cheerleading shtuff) and included a number of “dumb” jokes, most of the stuff made me chuckle. And if you’re anything like me (and for the sake of your social life, I hope to God not!), you might enjoy some of this tomfoolery as well. Some of my favorite moments included Schneider’s Tacito character, all of his back-and-forths with the ex-boyfriend, the obvious gay and lesbian undertones (well-played), the fun with the bartender and yeah…even a couple of the tender moments. I don’t usually like it when either Sandler or Schneider overplay the “sentimental” vibe in their films, but the stuff with the girl’s parents worked in this movie, and I even bought the love angle between the girl in whom Schneider is “inserted” and her ex-boyfriend (put your hands together for Joey Lawrence’s younger brother, ya’ll…whoah!!). The outtakes at the end of the film were embarrassingly unfunny though-what were they thinking? The film also starts off pretty slowly (although as my movie partness pointed out, they did have to establish some kind of background to all the goofiness to follow, so it’s somewhat understandable), but once the girl wakes up with her own penis (story of my life), things are pretty amusing thereafter.

Nobody’s gonna discover the cure for cancer while watching a movie like this, but if you want to forget about your shitty day-to-day life for a few hours, appreciate the humor of these dumb-dumb characters and look forward to seeing the lovely Anna Faris smile her eyes out for a couple of hours (call me!), drop a dime into this bin. I will say that I would love to see both Sandler and Schneider get out of their “dumb guy” or “fish out of water” character ruts one day and actually write a full-blown comedy that involves more wit, clever jabs and less dick and fart jokes though. Come on, guys…you’ve got the comedic testicles…take a year or two off and come back with something original. You can do it!!

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian