ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Rob Schneider, Rachel McAdams, Anna Faris, Andrew Keegan
screenplay by Tom Brady & Rob Schneider
directed by Tom Brady
by Walter Chaw What to think of a variation on Teen Wolf wherein the victim of the lycanthropic puberty metaphor is a young girl who turns into Rob Schneider? What to make of a film that wrests its central conceit of enchanted jewellery from the long-putrefied grasp of Mannequin 2? And what to make of a film released in the year 2002 that is this misogynistic, homophobic, racist, and cruel to the obese? Rather than postulate that our culture has regressed to the hale cultural morass of the mid-1980s, it's doubtless more fruitful to examine the ways in which film is becoming as self-reflexive, meta-critical, and free of irony as television.
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Jessica (Rachel McAdams) is your prototypical high school rich-bitch package come complete with a Bring It On retinue of hangers-on and token minorities. (Indeed, there is a subplot here revolving around a cheerleading competition and an evil Suzanne Pleshette/Tippi Hedren head cheerleader doppelgänger–undeveloped, it will go unmentioned.) Clive (Rob Schneider) is your prototypical jackass small-time felon who, as the film opens, is seen holding up a service station for a few dollars, squirting nacho cheese product into his mouth, and drinking squishy from the spigot. When Jessica, no saint herself, steals a pair of enchanted earrings and shares them with Clive (the "how"s and "why"s of such an event too contrived to really merit much of a mention), she wakes up the next morning as a 30-year-old man and vice versa.
The picture is mainly interested in how Schneider plays a lisping caricature of a homosexual, and the few times we do see what Clive is doing with comely Jessica's body indicate that a free clinic and an alcohol bath are probably in the young lady's near future. Because a film like this can't resist the ugly buffoon protagonist having a shot at a beautiful young bimbo, there's a bizarre complication with Jessica's best friend April (Anna Faris, playing with the same kind of feral hyperactivity as Marisa Coughlin in Freddy Got Fingered) falling in love in lesbian/statutory rape fashion with her transfigured best friend. And because movies are moving perilously close to the endlessly reductive ouroboros-ian cycle of self-reference that renders most television criticism tragically moot, The Hot Chick steals an entire discovery sequence from something as instantly recognizable as Big. It's not trying to be clever in its rip-off, it's trying to make you feel good for recognizing it.
The Hot Chick is, like Austin Powers in Goldmember and Master of Disguise, a picture that is only about itself. A farce of a parody of a comedy of a premise, it isn't a comparison to reality so much as it is a commentary about our knowledge of films. There's a dedicated insincerity about it that renders its scenes of proselytizing morality fascinatingly constructed: in a cultural wasteland where the average eleven-year-old can time plot points and mark act progressions, the only knowledge with currency is the knowledge of medium. The Hot Chick, in that context, is a model of formula, theft, and diminishing returns.
The greatest tragedy of the picture is that in the process of slouching its way into instant forgetfulness, it makes decisions that are hateful and lazy (unlike the surprisingly good-hearted Schneider vehicle Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo)–making one wonder along the way how Tom Brady, a one-time writer for both "The Critic" and "The Simpsons" (two programs of quality that plumb the reflexivity of pop culture to satiric effect, rather than deadening), could be making his hyphenate debut on something so beholden to the lowest instincts of our dangerously degraded cinematic vocabulary. Originally published: December 13, 2002.
THE DVD
by Bill Chambers Disney's 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen DVD presentation of The Hot Chick is outstanding, with one demerit point docked for blown-out whites. It's borderline ludicrous how close to perfection the image is–the attendant Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is far more down-to-earth for a movie of this ilk, with most sounds isolated in the front mains; the cheerleading competition lacks the aural depth of Bring It On's mix, though subwoofer burps do accompany the numerous pratfalls. The disc's alternate soundtrack, a feature-length commentary by director Tom Brady, proves that self-deprecation is not always endearing–draw too convincing a case for how bad your film is and you wind up insulting the only people likely to be listening to you in the first place. Brady's sarcasm grows old fast, though his opening jab at the school of scholarly criticism (in which he describes The Hot Chick as a film about "redemption") is mildly amusing.
Fifteen deleted scenes reveal a performance by "MADtv"'s Will Sasso that was removed from the film whole cloth. Too bad, too: Sasso's sawdust-obsessed Russian janitor "Mr. Garbaijian" is well drawn and more memorable than most of the characters that survived the guillotine. Also on board in this section is the original ending, wherein Schneider seems to be channelling Michael Keaton but at a loss for wit. The "Hot Chick Yearbook" contains several unspectacular making-of/promotional featurettes that rely curiously heavily on excerpts from omitted footage to pad out their respective running times: "Becoming Jessica" (9 mins.); "Becoming Clive" (5 mins.); "The Hot Chicks" (8 mins.); "Guest Speakers" (10 mins.), an obsequious tribute to Adam Sandler and other day-players (although the story behind Robert Davi's involvement is a good one); and "Physical Edition" (9 mins.)–the pillow fight was as violent in real life as it looks on screen! The video for Zed's "Starlight" rounds out the DVD, while a preview for Shanghai Knights cues up automatically upon inserting the platter. Originally published: April 25, 2003.
