The Hot Chick is a 2002 comedy film starring Rob Schneider as the title character — a criminal who mysteriously switches bodies with a popular teenager. The bulk of the film revolves around "Jessica" and her friends figuring out how to get Jessica's body back, as well as dealing with the awkward social situations that arise as a result of two completely different strangers switching bodies.
The film was directed by Tom Brady, and produced by Adam Sandler, who also had 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. It was filmed, in part, at El Segundo High School and Redondo Union High School.
Plot
The Hot Chick starts with a scene set in Abyssinia, 50 BC. Princess Nawa, disgusted by the groom of her arranged marriage, switches bodies with a slave girl by means of an enchanted set of earrings. This scene segues into a pep rally in which the eponymous "hot chick," Jessica Spencer, is shown leading the school's cheer squad.
Although she is not shown to be a completely mean-spirited person, Jessica tends to take her life for granted and frequently neglects the feelings of those around her.
Later, Jessica, her best friend April, and a few other girls visit the mall to hang out and do some shopping. They enter a new age store, where they check out a few items they like, including a pair of ancient earrings, which, unbeknownst to Jessica, are the same magical ones featured at the beginning of the movie. Since the earrings are not for sale, Jessica steals them.
Meanwhile, in another part of town, Clive, a career criminal, is robbing a gas station. The only things he can manage to steal there are nachos and drinks. Jessica and her friends stop for gas and as Clive is leaving the place, confuse him with a service-station employee. They ask him to check their car, and Clive obeys, not wanting to raise any suspicion. After Jessica accidentally drops one of her new earrings on the ground, the girls drive away. Clive finds the earring and picks it up, thinking it might be of monetary value.
Later, Jessica and Clive try on their respective earrings at the same time, triggering a chain of life-changing events. Jessica wakes up to find herself trapped in Clive's body, and Clive finds himself in Jessica's. To complicate things further, Jessica has a cheerleading event coming up soon, as well as her school's prom.
Jessica goes to school in Clive's body, triggering many comical situations. She gets a job as a school janitor, and is able to convince her friends that she really is Jessica in a man's body, but has trouble convincing anyone else. As the school janitor, she finds out that April's boyfriend, Jake, is only looking for sex, but that her own boyfriend, Billy, really loves her. She also finds out how hard it can be to navigate manly situations such as using a men's restroom.
Clive, wearing Jessica's body, finds himself in similar gender-reversed circumstances. Finding himself as the object of attraction to many men, he takes advantage of the situation, using his newly acquired looks to steal cars from men and to get a well-paying job at a club as a pole-dancer. However, Clive-as-Jessica also has to deal with feminine issues such as menstruation, as shown in a short scene with the character running out of a pharmacy holding Tampons and saying, "I've got to do what?"
Throughout the whole ordeal, Jessica finds herself face to face with several issues that she had failed to notice in her life. In searching for the person responsible for the body switch, she makes peace with a girl she publicly humiliated at the pep rally and one of her classmates about whom she had made a snide remark earlier. She also helps mend her parents' relationship by speaking privately with both her father and her mother while posing as the hired gardener "Taquito."
April, meanwhile, finds herself becoming more and more attracted to "Spence," Jessica's male identity. This is due more to a lack of self-confidence than anything else; as a man, Jessica has shown more genuine care and affection for April than any of her previous romantic interests. At the prom, Jessica tells April that all she needs to be beautiful and happy is herself, and nothing else.
In their desperation, Jessica and her friends return to the store where they got the earrings, and find out that the earrings were cursed. They are also told that unless the earrings are reunited before the end of the full-moon cycle, the bodies of both parties are permanently switched. The princess, it is revealed, was not aware of this and spent the rest of her life as a slave.
One of Jessica's friends sees Clive, using Jessica's body, in the news when a TV station shows a video of him beating up a man. They start looking for Clive, and find him working at the strip club. The girls try to negotiate with him, but the womanly Clive does not want his new, lucrative body to go back to its original owner. Jessica takes back her rightful body by stealing the one earring that Clive wears and putting it on. As a result, they trade bodies back, leaving Clive in the middle of a pole-dance for a client — April's ex-boyfriend, Jake. The humiliated Clive is arrested.
Outside the club, Jessica makes up with Billy, and the scene cuts to graduation. The movie ends with Clive, still dressed in lingerie, escaping the police and catching a ride with a familiar face who he thinks is a cab driver - the bartender from the club. The bartender smiles suggestively at Clive and locks the doors causing Clive to yell for help as they drive away.
Cast
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