The Hottie & the Nottie (2008)

It's obvious a movie that's sole claim to fame is that it stars Paris Hilton is not going to be a masterpiece. In fact, it seems every movie Paris Hilton stars in ends up being a horrible mess, and this is no exception. The Hottie and the Nottie...let's just think about what a stupid and conceited title that is. When Paris Hilton was offered the role as "The Hottie" she should have turned it down, not just because the script felt like it was written by a 10 year old, but because she is playing "The Hottie". That sounds so conceited, especially since Paris Hilton isn't all she seems to think she is. The title is also stupid, and sounds about as mature as the actual script is, which is the maturity you might find in an elementary school bathroom.

Nate Cooper (Joel Moore, who seems to be a mixture of John Heder and Mike White) is dumped by his girlfriend and decides to go to Los Angeles to find and date Christabelle Abbot (Paris Hilton), the girl he was attracted to in the first grade. Christabelle is apparently so attractive that every time she goes jogging, all males stop their activities to stare at her mouth agape. He ends up becoming friends again with her, but she can't go out with him because she made a pact with her not so attractive best friend June Phigg (Christina Lakin). Nate tries to set up guys with June to get with Christabelle. As June begins to get procedures done to her to make her less ugly, Nate begins to become more attracted to her.

I believe earlier I said that June Phigg was not so attractive. Well that's an understatement. The make-up people made the normally attractive Christina Lakin as nasty looking as possible, with black and green teeth stubs, a balding head, and a terrible case of halitosis. Several times I had to turn away from the screen when they would base the humor around June's hideousness, because I felt like I was going to throw up.

The script is bad, unfunny, and along with that shows no development in character whatsoever. Nate begins to fall for June, but not until after she becomes pretty. Before that, he shows no interest in her at all. He didn't even like her personality, he cares simply about looks, so if any of the female characters were like him, they would be running for the hills from this doofy looking guy. In a romantic comedy (I guess you can call this that, despite the lack of romance or humor), you'd expect there to be someone looking for their true love, but not here. It's all about looks in this superficial waste of time. Also Nate is always lying to make himself seem hipper, and ends up seeming like an unfunny version of Seinfeld's George Costanza, mixed with a lobotomized Napolean Dynamite. The plot also makes little sense. This guy had a crush on this girl in the first grade, then moved. Who the heck keeps a crush on a girl he only knew for less than a year, that barely even knew him. He thinks back to his time in elementary school and really wants to see her...she was a little girl. It's almost pedophilic.

The acting is all around bad. Joel Moore is by far the best actor, and he doesn't even deserve to play extras in community theater. Paris Hilton has an annoying flirtatious delivery of each line, and I don't think that she was told to act this way, this is just her natural acting abilities. Christina Lakin also has very poor acting abilities, but also didn't really need any. Her role is to be there and look as nasty as possible, then later to look pretty. She has few lines in comparison to the two untalented leads, especially Joel who spouts out stupid lines every 2 seconds. The back-up cast is also terrible, including one guy, who plays Nate's stupid friend, who thinks he is so cool, he's credited as The Greg Wilson, after all it's super cool to put a "The" in front of your name.

I watched this movie, because I thought it might be one of those "So bad it's funny" experiences that you enjoy laughing about later with friends. This is not one of those movies. It's just bad, no wait, it's just terrible. The movie's sense of the humor is so bad, it actually almost made me feel sorry for the writer. If she thought what she was writing was good at all, then she is either completely delusional, or she might have a mental problem. I hope Heidi Ferrer, writer of this film, along with a few episodes of Dawson's Creek, will write a masterpiece and just leave this as a blemish on her booming career, but in the future not force contrived slop on the viewing public with any more screenplays like this.

Now, onto the positives. The camera direction wasn't bad. It was kind of flashy and nice looking at times. The beach this was shot at looked like it would be nice to go for a dip at. I guess that counts as a positive. Paris Hilton plays a terrible character, but at least she's a kind hearted one. And that's all I can think of.

If you can't tell, I hated this movie with a passion, and from it's current ranking of number 10 in the bottom 100, I can tell other people share my views on this cinematic massacre.

My rating: BOMB out of ****. 88 mins. PG-13 for language, and crude humor.