The film's paper-thin plot centers around Nate Cooper (Joel David Moore), a slacker who suddenly realizes that his relationship troubles can be traced back to his kindergarten crush on a girl named Cristobel. He resolves to track her down, and discovers that she has, of course, blossomed into Hilton. Using their childhood connection to get close to her, Nate soon discovers the reason why she's still single, despite a legion of suitors. After all these years, she's still best friends with another girl from their kindergarten class, June Phigg (Christine Lakin). The problem is that June is the ugly "nottie" in the film's title. But she's not just ugly; she's so freakishly repulsive that when she goes out in public, people ask to have their picture taken with her.
You know how in some cartoons there's a character so hideously ugly that anyone unfortunate enough to set eyes on them can't help but run screaming in the other direction, often leaving nothing but a cloud of dust or a silhouette-shaped hole in the wall? That's a level of comedic sophistication several notches above the muck in which The Hottie and the Nottie wallows. This is, after all, a film which uses horse sound effects when June is introduced, as if the point wasn't already driven home through all the cross-cutting between her problem areas (moles, bacne and bad teeth, oh my) and the alleged hotness that is Paris.
And speaking of Paris, in case you were wondering, those acting lessons still haven't paid off. She pouts and poses her way through every scene, as if she is entirely unaware of the difference between modeling and acting. No matter the talent of the other members of the cast, her lack of big-screen charisma and flat line deliveries reduce every scene she's in to the level of a high school play. And yet amazingly enough, she's not the worst part of this film.
It's also not the weak, sitcom style direction or the lame attempts at comedy or the misogynistic fallacy that "the hotness of one woman is directly proportional to the ugliness of her friend." No, the worst part of this film is the message it sends to women and girls. Beauty may only be skin deep, the film says, but it's more important than anything else when evaluating a person's worth. If you're ugly, you don't deserve to live… or at least, to go out in public. But don't fret because those teeth can be fixed, that thinning hair filled in, that problem skin cleared up. According to this film, beauty is merely a matter of personal hygiene, which can be solved with a few procedures and the right prescriptions.
It's not really spoiling anything to reveal that June takes this message to heart (the reason why she waited so long is never addressed) and transforms into a hottie by the film's end. At which point it's OK for Nate to realize that he's actually liked her all along. The filmmakers could have taken a more courageous stance and had him realize this before her miraculous metamorphosis, but that would have undermined the shallow message at its heart. Whether ugly or beautiful, June is a character defined entirely by her looks.
The casting of Lakin, a hottie in her own right, in the role of June is also problematic. Remove the makeup, the wig, the false teeth, the mole and the unibrow and she's just as glamorous as Paris in real life. A girl who wasn't gorgeous to start with might have sent a different message. As it is, the film ought to be more accurately titled The Hottie and the Hottie in Ugly Makeup. But that's not as catchy, I guess.
As the hapless Nate, Moore seems like too nice of a guy to be in a film like this. And he's much better as a sidekick or a comic foil than as a leading man. The rest of the cast — including The Greg Wilson, a guy who evidently believes that inserting an article before his first name is the height of cleverness — doesn't do much to make the film any more watchable.
But then, there's not much anyone could do to save this film. By the time it got around to a gag involving a rotten toenail landing in a guy's mouth, I had already checked out. And it doesn't get any better from there.
0/0 Stars
