‘The Hot Chick,’ the latest comedic vehicle for Rob Schneider, starts out like a cliché high-school comedy groaner. Some formulaic exposition and cheap cheerleader jokes elicit eyeball rolls, but a funny thing happens on the way to a plot: ‘The Hot Chick’ is funny.
After a farfetched backstory to set up the body-switching antics to follow, we meet hot-chick Jessica Spencer (Rachel McAdams). Jessica’s not only super-hot, she’s also the captain of the cheerleading squad, a shoo-in for prom queen and the girlfriend of the adorable football star, Billy (Matthew Lawrence). Jessica cashes her perfect looks in for a dream life and is oblivious to the resentment she engenders in her classmates. Until, that is, she has a chance encounter with some ancient, mystical earrings.
Jessica wakes up to find herself in the body of a 30-something man, with all sorts of hair and body parts she doesn’t know how to deal with. Her perfect life comes screeching to a halt, and she enlists the help of best friend April (Anna Faris) to put it back together. Faris, of ‘Scary Movie’ fame, is barely recognizable as she doffs her spooky-goth looks for blond locks. She gives a touching performance as April, as she copes with her best friend turning into a man, and the surprising feelings he stirs up in her.
The rest of the cheerleading crew is enlisted to help Jessica’s new alter ego, ‘Spence,’ as she tries to win back her boyfriend, patch things up with her family and find her old body. The scenes with Jessica’s family are consistently funny: Jessica’s Dad (Michael O’Keefe) hires Spence as a lawn boy and proceeds to confide in him while her sexually frustrated mother makes a pass. Jessica learns that her fairy tail life wasn’t as perfect as she let herself believe.
What’s this? Character growth and sensitivity in a Rob Schneider movie? ‘The Hot Chick’ seeks to be more than just a star-driven showcase for the antics of another SNL alum, and manages to demonstrate a little heart.
It’s a step up for Schneider and writer-director Tom Brady (no relation to the football player). ‘The Hot Chick’ works as a movie it’s got a full complement of characters and secondary story lines. It might suffer from some of the heavy-handed sentimentality of its conclusion; Brady hasn’t yet mastered a light touch in his first directorial effort, but he and Schneider have excellent comedic chemistry.
Schneider’s uncanny comic timing ultimately propels ‘The Hot Chick.’ The movie rides on his ability to make audiences believe he’s a 17-year-old suburban princess, and he deftly tickles our collective funny bone in the process. Schneider also flashes some of the physical humor of a Jerry Lewis or Buster Keaton, and couples it with the clever characterizations he perfected on SNL.
‘The Hot Chick’ delivers what fans expect from a Rob Schneider movie: lots of belly laughs and an obligatory Adam Sandler cameo. Schneider keeps the laughs rolling throughout the film, and unlike so much of what passes as humor today, goes the length of the film without a gross-out gag.
‘The Hot Chick’ clicks with a lot of fun and some added heart. It works better than did ‘The Animal,’ the last outing from Schneider, and its sustainable laughs should garner a solid box office response this holiday season.
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