In 50 BC, in an Abyssinian castle, a princess uses a pair of enchanted earrings to escape an arranged marriage by swapping bodies with a slave girl. When each woman wears one of the earrings, their bodies are magically swapped while their minds remain in place. In her modern-day suburban home, Jessica Spencer is a beautiful but selfish "hot chick". Jessica's closest friends are April, Keecia, and Lulu. April is Jessica's best friend, and all four girls are cheerleaders. At school one day, Jessica makes fun of an overweight girl named Hildenburg and a Wiccan girl named Eden. After that, Jessica and her friends visit the local mall, where Jessica gets her rival Bianca into trouble and finds the earrings in an African-themed store. The earrings are not for sale, so Jessica steals them. Shortly afterward, a small-time criminal named Clive robs a nearby gas station. When Jessica and her friends stop there and mistake him for an employee, he services their car to avoid raising suspicion. Jessica accidentally drops one of the earrings on the ground, the girls drive away, and Clive picks up the earring. That evening, in their respective homes, Jessica and Clive put on their earrings. When they wake up the next morning, each of them is trapped in the other's body. This is especially difficult for Jessica, who has a cheering competition and the school prom coming up soon. After Jessica convinces her friends of who she is, they help her investigate the body swap. Hildenburg, Eden, and Bianca are all innocent, Hildenburg and Eden join Jessica after she apologizes to them, and Eden finds a picture of the earrings on the internet. When the girls return to the African store, the shopkeeper explains how the earrings work and tells the girls they must find the other earring soon or the change will become permanent. Meanwhile, Jessica is hired for two jobs while secretly living with April. At her own home, where she works as a gardener, her parents tell her about their marital problems and she helps them rekindle their sex life. t school, while cleaning the boys' locker room as a custodian, she spies on her boyfriend Billy, who truly loves her, and April's boyfriend Jake, who has another girlfriend Monique. Faced with Jake's infidelity, April begins to fall in love with Jessica, who agrees to take her to the prom. At the cheering competition, Jessica signals romantically to Billy while disguised as the school mascot, but when the head of her suit falls off, he becomes confused and leaves with Bianca. During this time, Clive has been using Jessica's body to make money from men, including Billy, who gives him his money and car, believing he is Jessica. On the evening of the prom, Hildenburg sees a video of Clive robbing a man on the TV news, goes to the scene of the crime, and finds a business card for the club where Clive works as a pole dancer. She informs Jessica at the prom, and the girls go to the club. When they find Clive, Jessica steals his earring and puts it on herself along with the other one. With the two earrings now on the same person, Jessica's and Clive's bodies return to their original owners. After Jessica makes up with Billy, the film ends with the school's graduation ceremony, followed by a scene in which Clive, running from the law and still dressed in lingerie, is abducted by a bartender who believes he is a homosexual.
The Hot Chick was originally rated R, but several scenes were edited out in order to receive the broader PG-13 rating. The R version was classified 12A in Britain, maintaining the same rating given to the PG-13 theatrical version. Before the film was released theatrically, previews indicated the title would be Miss Popularity.
Reception
Box office
The film opened at #5 at the U.S. box office on the weekend of December 13–15, 2002, taking in US$7,401,146, averaging $3,338 across the 2,217 theatres where it was shown. It went on to earn a total worldwide gross of $54,639,553.
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 22% based on reviews from 83 critics. The critical consensus reads: "The Hot Chick's one-note concept gets stretched thin, and a lot of the jokes fall flat." On Metacritic the film has a score of 29% based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F. Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper gave the film two thumbs way down. Ebert gave the film half a star, declaring, "The MPAA rates this PG-13. It is too vulgar for anyone under 13, and too dumb for anyone over 13." Roeper panned the film saying "it's in color. And, it was mostly in focus." Dennis Harvey of Variety magazine wrote: "At best routinely assembled—at worst barely competent. The slapstick is labored, and the bigger setpieces flat."
The Hot Chick was released May 13, 2003 on VHS and DVD. The DVD featured the deleted scenes that would have made the film an R, including an alternate ending.
