Bet ween the Frames

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Friday , June 6 , 2008

The Hottie & The Nottie - Thinly Written Piece Stuffed with Flat Humor

Posted by betweentheframes , Reader : 408 , 20:05:42

It is, as you may have guessed, a completely vile little film, the sort of romantic comedy that could only have been produced by cerebrally challenged film producers whose only knowledge of reality comes from tabloid magazines. This is a flick in which horrible people try to be nice to other horrible people in the hopes of having sex with other horrible people; meanwhile, many horrible people fart. We've seen the basic story before. The film centers on the lovable loser/Broken-hearted/ambitious Nate Cooper (Joel David Moore). In the intervening years there have been other women in his life, but none who could measure up to Cristabel Abbott (Paris Hilton). With all other romantic options failing, Nate, convinced she's the only girl for him, wants to reverse the tide of his failed relationships by chasing after childhood love, and decides to move back to L.A. and track her down, leaving the east coast for California to take a chance with his childhood crush, the hottie, the girl of his dreams. He first locates his former bestest friend in the world Arno Blount (the Greg Wilson) who has maintained a huge scrapbook of detailed information for Nate to use to track down the lovely Cristabel, the softly-lit object of affection for body-builder and stalker alike on Venice Beach. Having met Nate, Cristabel agrees, but only if he can find a proper date for her hideous best friend, June Phigg (Christine Lakin) behind a shaggy rug of body hair, nasty teeth, a hair-sprouting mole, and toe fungus. To say that June who has a mole on her chin the size of a small state, wouldn't be nice but it would be true. In order to secure a date with the hottie, the nottie must be appeased. Nate immediately makes it his mission to find that someone for her. Thanks to the wonders of laser surgery and modern dentistry, she is eventually unearthed as the beautiful girl beneath it all. In an effort to not hurl every time she's around, Nate treats June to a makeover, which kickstarts a chain of events that transforms the "nottie" into the "hottie." As Nate goes about getting a man interested in her, he finds she's much more than fungal toenails and unibrow. She's all woman, and as the layers of ick are peeled away, Nate's has serious doubts which girl he's actually attracted to. This movie is lame, boring, and horrible on every level. What really ruins this movie is the horrible writing. The Hottie and the Nottie never really explains why Cristabel would do this. Here, Cristabel is just an altruistic masochist, since she can't stop talking about how much she wants to have sex, but can't out of loyalty to her friend. It's beyond believable that a woman who spends so much time tanning and maintaining her hair extensions would remain so close to a woman so desperately in need of a body wax. The script sticks closely to a tried-and-tested rom-com formula but it goes way too far on the Nottie make-up, making it impossible to believe that anyone would walk around in that state and, more to the point, that the girl's supposed best friend wouldn't have immediately given her an extreme make-over in the first place. The actors themselves are horrible and whoever tells them they could act need to be taught what acting is. The film's general superficiality is especially unfortunate given that both Moore and Lankin seem capable of conveying actual emotions. Moore and Lakin make unlikable leads but the film is ultimately overwhelmed by a vacuous performance from Paris Hilton and a cliché-packed script that fails to generate any laughs, even the normally reliable role of the wisecracking best friend doesn't work, thanks to an annoying performance by the even-more-annoying The Greg Wilson. Jailbird/socialite Paris Hilton's greatest professional achievement thus far might be the mug shot after her DUI arrest: hair, eyeliner and lip gloss all camera-fabulous. Here, America's favorite ex-convict is a pretty easy target, and in this case, she deserves it, as her total lack of acting ability completely scuppers the film. She is not an actor she tries to be one so bad and it backfires on the big screen. Hilton's acting ability is as bad as everyone projected because it is not really a character stretch for her. She acts as a hot twenty-something. In Cristabel's devotion to June, the screenplay intends to present Hilton's character as the soul of sweetness and decency. As the vanilla cutie unaccountably loyal to her grotesquely unattractive best bud, no one will ever believe for a second that she'd be June's best friend, or that she'd want to date Nate, for that matter. As a result, her performance is shockingly empty and purposeless and literally seems to suck the life from the screen every moment she appears. If she looked less like the average bleach blonde trying to make it in Hollywood, it would make sense for a man to spend so much money trying to fix up her friend. However, as it stands, it seems like the same amount of money could be invested in tanning and bleaching a new Paris Hilton, a vapid, anorexic mouthbreather who apparently is unbelievably popular despite having no talents or occupation - making her the perfect character for celebrity glory hole Paris Hilton. Throughout the movie, with Christabel delivering such nuggets as "A life without orgasms is like a world without flowers", It's Hilton's way of insisting she's "smart" and "thoughtful" and "not illiterate." The fallacy of The Hottie and the Nottie, as you've probably figured out, is that there is no Hottie. At this point, she is never going to be a respectable actress, not that she cares, and her appearance in this film signals an astonishing lack of imagination and basic design of competence from the production. Thinly written piece stuffed with flat humor, and painfully unfunny throughout, The Hottie and the Nottie is yet another feather in the cap of a woman whose career thrives on making millions of dollars on products that no one seems to want. As ghastly as it sounds, what we have here is an ambitious yet illogical flick, possibly the worst movie on 2008, which will go down on IMDb's Bottom 100 in no time. The Hottie and the Nottie will probably sweep the 2009 Razzies. It's a total and complete misfire of intention and execution; an utterly worthless, unfunny sack of pain that doesn't deserve anyone's time or attention. It's best to ignore it.

It is, as you may have guessed, a completely vile little film, the sort of romantic comedy that could only have been produced by cerebrally challenged film producers whose only knowledge of reality comes from tabloid magazines. This is a flick in which horrible people try to be nice to other horrible people in the hopes of having sex with other horrible people; meanwhile, many horrible people fart.

We've seen the basic story before. The film centers on the lovable loser/Broken-hearted/ambitious Nate Cooper (Joel David Moore). In the intervening years there have been other women in his life, but none who could measure up to Cristabel Abbott (Paris Hilton). With all other romantic options failing, Nate, convinced she's the only girl for him, wants to reverse the tide of his failed relationships by chasing after childhood love, and decides to move back to L.A. and track her down, leaving the east coast for California to take a chance with his childhood crush, the hottie, the girl of his dreams. He first locates his former bestest friend in the world Arno Blount (the Greg Wilson) who has maintained a huge scrapbook of detailed information for Nate to use to track down the lovely Cristabel, the softly-lit object of affection for body-builder and stalker alike on Venice Beach.

Having met Nate, Cristabel agrees, but only if he can find a proper date for her hideous best friend, June Phigg (Christine Lakin) behind a shaggy rug of body hair, nasty teeth, a hair-sprouting mole, and toe fungus. To say that June who has a mole on her chin the size of a small state, wouldn't be nice but it would be true. In order to secure a date with the hottie, the nottie must be appeased. Nate immediately makes it his mission to find that someone for her. Thanks to the wonders of laser surgery and modern dentistry, she is eventually unearthed as the beautiful girl beneath it all. In an effort to not hurl every time she's around, Nate treats June to a makeover, which kickstarts a chain of events that transforms the "nottie" into the "hottie." As Nate goes about getting a man interested in her, he finds she's much more than fungal toenails and unibrow. She's all woman, and as the layers of ick are peeled away, Nate's has serious doubts which girl he's actually attracted to.

This movie is lame, boring, and horrible on every level. What really ruins this movie is the horrible writing. The Hottie and the Nottie never really explains why Cristabel would do this. Here, Cristabel is just an altruistic masochist, since she can't stop talking about how much she wants to have sex, but can't out of loyalty to her friend. It's beyond believable that a woman who spends so much time tanning and maintaining her hair extensions would remain so close to a woman so desperately in need of a body wax. The script sticks closely to a tried-and-tested rom-com formula but it goes way too far on the Nottie make-up, making it impossible to believe that anyone would walk around in that state and, more to the point, that the girl's supposed best friend wouldn't have immediately given her an extreme make-over in the first place.

The actors themselves are horrible and whoever tells them they could act need to be taught what acting is. The film's general superficiality is especially unfortunate given that both Moore and Lankin seem capable of conveying actual emotions. Moore and Lakin make unlikable leads but the film is ultimately overwhelmed by a vacuous performance from Paris Hilton and a cliché-packed script that fails to generate any laughs, even the normally reliable role of the wisecracking best friend doesn't work, thanks to an annoying performance by the even-more-annoying The Greg Wilson.

Jailbird/socialite Paris Hilton's greatest professional achievement thus far might be the mug shot after her DUI arrest: hair, eyeliner and lip gloss all camera-fabulous. Here, America's favorite ex-convict is a pretty easy target, and in this case, she deserves it, as her total lack of acting ability completely scuppers the film. She is not an actor she tries to be one so bad and it backfires on the big screen. Hilton's acting ability is as bad as everyone projected because it is not really a character stretch for her. She acts as a hot twenty-something.

In Cristabel's devotion to June, the screenplay intends to present Hilton's character as the soul of sweetness and decency. As the vanilla cutie unaccountably loyal to her grotesquely unattractive best bud, no one will ever believe for a second that she'd be June's best friend, or that she'd want to date Nate, for that matter. As a result, her performance is shockingly empty and purposeless and literally seems to suck the life from the screen every moment she appears. If she looked less like the average bleach blonde trying to make it in Hollywood, it would make sense for a man to spend so much money trying to fix up her friend. However, as it stands, it seems like the same amount of money could be invested in tanning and bleaching a new Paris Hilton, a vapid, anorexic mouthbreather who apparently is unbelievably popular despite having no talents or occupation - making her the perfect character for celebrity glory hole Paris Hilton.

Throughout the movie, with Christabel delivering such nuggets as "A life without orgasms is like a world without flowers", It's Hilton's way of insisting she's "smart" and "thoughtful" and "not illiterate." The fallacy of The Hottie and the Nottie, as you've probably figured out, is that there is no Hottie. At this point, she is never going to be a respectable actress, not that she cares, and her appearance in this film signals an astonishing lack of imagination and basic design of competence from the production.

Thinly written piece stuffed with flat humor, and painfully unfunny throughout, The Hottie and the Nottie is yet another feather in the cap of a woman whose career thrives on making millions of dollars on products that no one seems to want. As ghastly as it sounds, what we have here is an ambitious yet illogical flick, possibly the worst movie on 2008, which will go down on IMDb's Bottom 100 in no time. The Hottie and the Nottie will probably sweep the 2009 Razzies. It's a total and complete misfire of intention and execution; an utterly worthless, unfunny sack of pain that doesn't deserve anyone's time or attention. It's best to ignore it.

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