The Hot Chick (2002)
Directed by Tom Brady
Not only is Jessica Spencer the most popular girl in school -- she is also the meanest. But things change for the attractive teen when a freak accident involving a cursed pair of earrings and a chance encounter at a gas station causes her to switch bodies with Clive, a sleazy crook. Jessica, in the form of the repulsive Clive, struggles to adjust to this radical alteration and sets out to get her own body back before the upcoming prom.
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What critics compared The Hot Chick to
By default, items like Blake Edwards’ extremely underrated Switch (1991), starring a phenomenal Ellen Barkin, and even 2002’s Rob Schneider comedy The Hot Chick (which features a winning Anna Faris and Rachel McAdams) both exude a formidable queerness which, despite the outspoken gay character, feels almost entirely absent from Freaky —as if, by merely presenting a gay character accepted as being on par with others the narrative breezily excuses itself from having to actually engage with him beyond the superficiality of acknowledgement.
And like gender-swapping flicks such as "Switch," "All of Me" and "The Hot Chick," that's exacerbated by suddenly being in the possession of different sorts of body parts.
While the movie’s title winkingly references 2003’s Freaky Friday, a closer comparison might be the 2002 Rob Schneider vehicle The Hot Chick .
Akin to films like the Jamie Lee Curtis/Lindsay Lohan family comedy Freaky Friday and Rob Shneider romp The Hot Chick , Freaky stars Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton as an outcast teen girl and an outcast backwoods killer who are be forced to walk a mile in each other’s shoes after an attack goes haywire.
Prelude to a Kiss , Dating the Enemy, The Hot Chick , The Change-Up , Vice-Versa .
But the committed performances and energetic pacing keep it afloat, especially when compared to the only previous Hollywood movie to use a remotely similar premise, “The Hot Chick” (2002), in which petty crook Rob Schneider switches bodies with cheerleader Rachel McAdams.
The last time I had one of these moments was with Rachel McAdams, whose performances in Wedding Crashers, The Notebook, Mean Girls, and The Hot Chick convinced me that she was The Next Great Actress… since all four performances were so strong… and none of them could really be connected to the actress in any of the other ones.
Yet this rip-roaring, heartbreaking YA adventure is very much its own beast, as different from Miyazaki’s ageless Studio Ghibli animations as it is from live-action western romps such as Freaky Friday, The Hot Chick and It’s a Boy Girl Thing or, perhaps more pertinently, from Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s 1982 Japanese hit, Tenk?sei.
Remember how Rob Schneider turned into Rachel McAdams in The Hot Chick? Raimi basically pulls that trick here in Send Help…