DVD Review: The Hot Chick
What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this movie includes extremely
explicit and offensive humor in just about every category. A
father complains to his daughter (not knowing it is his
daughter) that his wife won't give him oral sex. A mother grabs
the person she thinks is their gardener (not knowing it is her
daughter) and kisses him passionately. A child is a
cross-dresser. Teenagers drink at a bar and a character talks
about places to "hide weed." There are jokes that are racist
and homophobic.
- Families can talk about the appeal of movies like this. Where is the line between funny and offensive?
This body-switching movie begins with an ancient princess using enchanted earrings to switch bodies with a servant girl so that she can get out of an arranged marriage. Cut to the present day where Rob Schneider plays a petty thief who switches bodies with a snobby blonde high school princess named Jessica (Rachel McAdams), after she steals the earrings from a store specializing in ancient artifacts. The rest of the movie is about Jessica (now played by Schneider) tries to get back into her old body. Along the way, we are subjected to horrifyingly awful jokes about the different ways men and women go to the bathroom, a cross-dressing child, priest molestation of young boys, the thief (now in Jessica's body) having to buy tampons, bulimia, places to hide marijuana, parents of different races, homosexuality, and incest.
Even by the low standards of Saturday Night Live-alumni movies, and by the even lower standards of Adam Sandler-produced movies, THE HOT CHICK is excruciating, loathsome, offensive, vile, and, even worse, it is not funny. To add insult to injury, it is also much too long.
There is a lot of blame to go around here -- from producer Adam Sandler to star and co-writer Rob Schneider (who, bi-racial himself, should be especially ashamed of the racist stereotyping of a Korean woman and her bi-racial daughter), to director Tom Brady, who brings out the worst in his cast and has no sense of comic timing whatsoever. But we have to reserve a special blame category for the MPAA, which gave this horrendously crude and vulgar film a PG-13 rating, when its content is closer to NC-17.
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
Join Us