Review by Peter Lynn View This Trailer What happens when Rob Schneider invades the body of a nubile teenage girl? Happily, strict stalker laws and the widespread availability of pepper spray have kept that question mercifully unanswered. However, the trailer for The Hot Chick explores an equally disturbing riddle: What happens when a nubile teenage girl wakes up in the body of Rob Schneider?  The first thing we see in the trailer for The Hot Chick is a carload of the titular hot chicks (no pun intended) in a Volkswagen, bearing the license plate HOT CHK 1. Right off the bat, the filmmakers set the tone of the film, letting us know this is going to be a subtle work of clever cinematic wit -- the sort of film the Algonquin Round Table might have come up with, had they been asked to pen the screenplay for a Rob Schneider vehicle.
We watch as the blonde heroines pull into a service station, eager to hassle gas jockey Rob Schneider. The driver (Rachel McAdams as The Hot Chick) intentionally honks her horn while Schneider's under the hood checking the oil, so that she startles him and he bumps his head on the hood. So far, we have Schneider in intense pain, and a following montage of hot chicks walking in Reservoir Dogs-style slo-mo, bouncing their lustrous hair, participating in cheerleader routines, and lasciviously eating sno-cones; at this point, the trailer is looking promising.  Like a butterfly turning into a caterpillar, a hot chick turning into Rob Schneider doesn't normally happen in nature, so it's necessary to show a scene explaining the transition. And so we cut to a classroom, where a teacher is handing back papers written on the Salem Witch Trials. Predictably, the Wicca-worshipping goth girl got the only A. The Hot Chick pipes up that this isn't fair, since the goth girl is the only one in the class who was actually there. Really, this is arguably more an age joke than a witch joke. Despite its muddled message, it is treated as a quip of Ricklesean destructive power.
Naturally, taunting those endowed with the powers of our Dark Lord isn't the soundest of ideas, and before The Hot Chick can say "Pardon my zinger," the witch is speaking in tongues, casting some ancient Sumerian spell of some kind. Remember in The Craft where the blonde bitchy girl insults Rachel True, so she casts a spell to make all her hair fall out? That's exactly what happens here. Well, the witch actually turns The Hot Chick into Schneider, which amounts to the same curse in the end. Cut to the next morning, when The Hot Chick awakens. Her mind is now in Schneider's body. (As this is the last we'll officially see of her body, this marks the moment that the trailer goes right into the sewer.) Schneider saunters into the bathroom for a series of horrified reaction shots, all to the tune of Urge Overkill's version of Girl, You'll be a Woman Soon, no doubt reminding the audience of another, far better film. A note on the music, for a moment: This trailer doubles as a commercial for its own soundtrack -- a good move, since it's clearly better than the movie -- by featuring at least four or five songs. One of these leads to an interesting observation about the use of songs from Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American album in recent trailers. Where the DJ Qualls vehicle The New Guy prominently featured "The Middle" in its trailer, The Hot Chick makes use of "The Authority Song." So, if you're releasing a film anytime soon, and you're dying to have a Jimmy Eat World track in the trailer, just make sure your title consists of these three things:
 But back to the trailer. Bottom line: I just don't want to look at Rob Schneider. He used to have a joke in his stand-up routine, playing upon his short stature and full, lustrous pompadour, to the point that in Japan, he was Elvis. And while Schneider remained laughably distant from having the sexual magnetism of the King, he did at least resemble a midget version of the WWE's The Rock -- an achondroplastic Dwayne Johnson, a Little People's Champion, if you smell what I'm cooking here.
Now, he just looks like a schlump. He's greasy-looking, even for a guy playing the part of an auto-mechanic-cum-teenager. His hair's thinning and tangled. Did he contract mange on the set of The Animal? Yes, they're playing up his unattractiveness because that's the hilarious premise of the movie: a hot chick in an ugly guy's body. I get that. But presumably the ugly guy is in The Hot Chick's body, too, right? The trailer isn't clear on this point, and maybe the Hot Chick simply woke up looking like Rob Schneider, leaving us with not one but two Rob Schneiders walking around, but since this prospect is too terrifying to contemplate, I'm going to assume the ugly guy is in The Hot Chick's body. So, instead of showing us Rob Schneider doing hot chick activities, why couldn't the trailer just consist of the Hot Chick doing Rob Schneider things, like sitting on the couch in a pair of tighty-whities, watching TV and scratching herself? I'd watch a movie about that. It's nice to look at, and I can relate to it. They're selling us the wrong angle here.  Throughout the duration of the trailer, we see Rob Schneider being pepper-sprayed, falling down an entire set of stadium bleachers, fighting boys like a girl, fighting girls like a boy, and teaching best friend Anna Faris about the delights of lesbian-but-not really-lesbian love (Faris, in this trailer, becomes surely the first female in recorded history to request a viewing of Schneider's penis). And yet, one wonders: what's the Hot Chick doing? Is she at the gas station, looking as cute in her little grease monkey uniform as the women in the calendar hanging in the back room? Or did she just stay home and do what most guys say they'd do if they woke up in a beautiful woman's body? This movie is called The Hot Chick, but where is she?
Even with the inclusion of a cameo from buddy/executive producer/wealthy benefactor Adam Sandler to try to lure people to the theater, the essential problem with the trailer is still apparent: namely, that no amount of smoke-screening can hide the fact that this is a Rob Schneider movie. It's pretty obvious that little scabby-legged cutie Colleen Haskell from Survivor was the only reason guys turned out in droves to endure the loathsome visage of Schneider in his last star turn. If The Hot Chick bombs -- and I offer a silent prayer for just that -- the studio execs just might figure things out and give her a starring vehicle of her own. Guys, do yourself a double favour and skip this one. Even if you don't get the Colleen movie next time, you at least won't have to look at Rob Schneider this time. Girls, you already know you don't want to look at Rob Schneider. Two Billy Crystals -- earned entirely on Hot Chick content, with no thanks to Schneider. RATING:
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