Halfway through Rob Schneider's latest vehicle, he rebuffs the advances of a randy housewife with the words: "This is unnatural for me in at least five different ways!"
He ain't kidding. For Schneider is in fact the woman's 18-year-old daughter Jessica, who has accidentally swapped her body with that of a 30-year-old slob called Clive.
How this occurs isn't important - something to do with magic Abyssinian
earrings, in case you were wondering - as it's merely a device enabling Schneider to add another unlikely transformation to his eclectic CV.
The erstwhile Saturday Night Live regular has already played a male prostitute in "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" and a half-man, half-beast in "The Animal". So it's not that much of a stretch to see this chubby, pratfalling geek camping it up as a teenage girl trapped inside a middle-aged feller.
With Adam Sandler executive-producing, the humour isn't exactly subtle, revolving as it does around Jessica/Clive's problems with male urinals, erections, and surplus body hair. (One sight gag has the star taking a bone-crunching tumble down every step of an athletics stand.)
Unfortunately Schneider's concept of being a woman comes uncomfortably close to a limp-wristed gay stereotype, while the possibilities of a quasi-sapphic liaison with best pal April ("Scary Movie" star Anna Faris) predictably provoke much schoolboy sniggering ("I am so lesbian right now!").
Mawkishly sentimental when it's not being crudely smutty, "The Hot Chick" will leave most audiences cold - unless, of course, you find the idea of Sandler as a bongo-playing pothead hilarious.
The Hot Chick (2003)
