“The Hottie and the Nottie” is nothing but a big game of “pretend” that director Putnam asks his audience to play along with, but… we can’t. Pretend Paris Hilton is hot, pretend Paris Hilton is one of the most desirable women on the planet, pretend the CGI used to cover Hilton’s fugly features isn’t there, pretend even with an utterly disgusting but sweet woman, that Paris hilton would be the better alternative, pretend this movie is funny, pretend this movie isn’t one of the worst comedies ever made. I can’t even pretend Paris Hilton is good looking, so from the start even with the body doubles (how did she get that ghetto booty?!) and trick camera angles, this “comedy” is a tall order and attack on my senses from the first twenty seconds. Because, a movie where Paris Hilton is a bombshell is less comedy and more Science Fiction.
Joel David Moore plays the jejune numbskull Nate, a pitiable man who wouldn’t have such of a problem getting women if he weren’t obsessed with his childhood love interest Christabel, a brain dead, vapid, and self-centered young woman who teases Nate in a way that makes her less of an inadvertent focal point and more of a manipulative beast who is well aware of the sick games she plays. The problem is Christabel (Hilton, the dead eyed troll pretending to be a bombshell) as much as she wants a relationship is so committed to her friend June (Lakin, the bombshell pretending to be a dead eyed troll) and will not get together with a man if June doesn’t. This sets up many interesting dilemmas (read: sitcom devices) for Nate to please June in order to get to Christabel, while simulaneously aiming to please Christabel.
Nate is in the process that typical media induced stereotype of the male who is child-like, simple, and willing to do anything berating or demeaning to win over the woman (so pathetic is he that he literally gets hit by a car driven by his violent girlfriend in the opening and blames himself for her attack), while the woman is always the motherly, superior being who takes pity on the man and eventually finds something to settle on him with. Even when the story takes the obvious turn with the newly improved Lakin as the hot June, she also seems to take pity on Nate nurturing him like a mom by the second half. But then it’s not like any of my criticisms are new or shocking. You can’t watch the trailer to this without knowing it’s one of the worst movies ever made.
Who’s the Hottie and who’s the Nottie?
But Putnam’s film achieves all levels of gross out humor that it’s almost like an endurance test to topple “Jackass,” or something. June is so grotesque she’s little more than a cartoon painted with shabby make up effects, providing us with offensive superficial reasons to dislike her, while begging that we like Cristabel because she’s gorgeous. Paris Hilton often looks like a cat trying to walk on its hind legs. She stumbles, she stalls, and she can never deliver the trite dialogue with even the slightest conviction. Regardless of who was in this role, the entire premise is pointless. Why would anyone be attracted to Cristabel anyway? At least Cameron Diaz provided an argument in “There’s Something about Mary.”
The film revolves around and relies on her performance to carry the movie, which is a mistake from the get go since she can never seem to decide if her character is flirtatiously coy or just naive towards men’s advances while most of her dialogue is scarce enough to be at that quality of a porn star leading up to the inevitable sex. “The Hottie and the Nottie” in the end, serves as nothing more than an excuse to inflate Hilton’s (who exec produces) fabricated status as a sex symbol, even fetishizing her right down to the promotional poster. Joel Moore is also that cliché bumbling male degrading himself just to follow his lifelong infatuation, failing to provide us with a reason to root for him at every turn; truly shrill though is The Greg Wilson (he has a “The” at the beginning of his name, so he must be funny), the typical comic relief for a truly unfunny film who contributes nothing more than another reason to despise this.
Writer Heidi Ferrer’s entire moral to the story is fundamentally screwed since the entire basis for the film is deifying Paris Hilton, and poorly setting the message that true beauty is skin deep. Yet Nate doesn’t realize he’s actually in love with June until she has her makeover and looks beautiful. It’s just the kind of contradictory take on superficiality expected in this type of garbage. I don’t hate Paris Hilton like everyone else seems to. I don’t care who she is as a person, I just hate how fixated people are on a woman with little to nothing to offer in the way of sex appeal, and charisma, and “The Hottie and the Nottie” is another argument in why people convince themselves out of delusion that she is actually sexy. As for how this Hilton vanity project fared with me? Do I even need to say it? Look alive, suckas.