Movie Review: The Hottie and the Nottie by Stuart Taylor

It’s Paris Hilton Season on Shouting at Cows. Welcome to your nightmares.

With extra photoshopping and label text to make sure you know which is which

Meet Nate. He’s your average 20-something year old guy, looking for the right girl – we all know what it’s like (swap the genders around, as required), right? Well, it turns out he already has the perfect girl in mind and he’s been in love with her since he was six years old: Paris Hilton. Or her character, whatever. She was the prettiest girl in his class and everyone loved her, but her best friend was the ugliest, loserest girl in the class – a Nottie.

We jump forward to the present day: Nate’s being dumped by his lunatic girlfriend. She hates that he writes silly songs about all the crazy stuff she does, so she smashes his guitar over his head and then runs him over with her car. This won’t come into play later but at least we definitely know Nate is single now.

In Nate’s bedside drawer we see a photo of six year old Paris. Is it just me, or is this creepy as fuck? Like, seriously creepy. He realises he must find reunite with her and try and romance her! To do this he enlists in the aid of his old school friend, Arno (played by someone called ‘The Greg Wilson’, whose acting career boasts roles such as: Head Elf, Animal, Tumbles and Pizza Delivery Guy). Arno has kept all his old school yearbooks and digs out a photo of Paris when she was thirteen declaring that she was “super hot from thirteen onwards.” Creeeeeepy as fuuuccck.

It turns out that Paris is still best friends with the Nottie and Arno declared a universe law that states, ‘the hotness of one girl is inversely proportional to that of her best friend.’ This is a movie premise we have to accept; just like we accepted sending Bruce Willis to blow up an asteroid. Just nod your head and move on. I’m wondering – is he going to fall for the Nottie, like in She’s All That? That seems to be the standard template for these films. Let’s find out.

Paris looks like Voldemort when she's face on

Arno has a big file detailing everything he’s found out about Paris, from high school onwards, including her daily routine. Creeeeeeppppyyyyy as fuuuuuuuuucccck. But now Nate knows to be at a certain bench at a certain time as Paris jogs past each morning. As Paris jogs by, he accidentally jumps on her and pins her to the ground. Instead of pepper-spraying the living Jesus out of him, she ends up remembering his from primary school and they go for lunch together to catch up! Score!

For some reason, Nate lies and says he works as a personal trainer: possibly because Paris was jogging so he thought that they’d have something in common? Anyway, he’s an idiot. But Paris invites him to the gym with her and… the Nottie. Paris’s acting is OK. It’s pretty generic and it’s somewhat distracting that she keeps trying to keep her head sideways to the camera as she does in her modelling shots. She also can’t stop smiling and speaks every line as if she’s trapped in a shampoo advert. But apart from that, it’s an Oscar Emmy worthy performance.

So here we go: the appearance of the Nottie, as we meet her at the gym. She is still far from blessed in the looks department, if you use the front page of the Daily Star as your benchmark. In fact, if she’s only 26 I’d be seriously concerned about her health: she has major skin problems, balding hair, teeth all over the place and toe that’s about to rot of. I’m not trying to be mean, but they’ve made her look as if she’s dying. She looks like she should be in a wheelchair with a IV line. So, in some ways they’ve gone a bit too far and in other ways I’m impressed they haven’t just slapped a pair of spectacles on Rachel Leigh Cook and declared her ‘ugly as sin’. It’s also good that she’s ‘unattractive’ for reasons of ill-health and not fatness or facial asymmetry, which is just a bit mean. Anyway, on with the film:

Paris tells Nate the plot of the movie: she used to slut it around, but she feels sorry for Nottie because she’s never been kissed. She vows not to date another man until Nottie finds her ‘someone special’. Which is nice. But now Nate has a mission: to find love for Nottie. Paris says, ‘It would be a major step to get her laid (…) A life without orgasms is like a world without flowers.’

A world without flowers

Nate pays off a lonely Stooge to join him in a few double dates. He’s repulsed, but accepts. Nottie has some strange effects on people. For example, the date was meant to take place on a yacht cruising around the sea but the captain freaks out when seeing Nottie and runs away. So they spend the evening on a moored boat, where Nate – desperate to keep conversation flowing –  reveals his ideal date would take place in Venice. This perks up Nottie,  usually a bit angry and ‘alternative’ as if played by Lizzie Caplan, who reveals she would love to go to Venice, too! Is this foreshadowing for the inevitable Nottie/Nate romantic pairing? I’m genuinely intrigued as to how they are going to resolve this film.

After the Stooge runs away due to Nottie’s infected toenail exploding into his mouth, Nate goes back to Paris and Nottie’s place for some drinks. He gives them a $2000 gift certificate for a beauty spa that he ‘won’ (hint: he bought it) as a means to shine up Nottie a little. He now seems to be meandering into the middle ground between getting Nottie a man as a mean to get Paris and doing it because he feels sorry she’s never been loved.

As part of their diabolic scheme, Arno and Nate strap the Stooge to a chair and through a mixture of hypnotherapy and electrocution they brainwash him into seeing some kind of sexy, gold-plated, alien MILF whenever he looks at Nottie. I’m not sure who the sexy woman is, but the Stooge is very excited about her. To make sure they can un-hypnotise him, Nate and Arno come up with a safe-phrase to snap him out of it: “I love midget mimes”.

The whole hypnotism scheme works a little too well. On the second double date, he licks ice cream off Nottie’s mole and keeps calling her a goddess. Nottie loves the attention, but – oh no! – a very, very short mime is performing nearby! This, inevitably, leads to a little girl shouting “I love midget mimes!” (her father: “they’re called little people, sweetie.”) and for the Stooge to snap back to reality and run away screaming. Again. To make matters worse for Nottie, the mime then proceeds to humiliate her by drawing her caricature as a donkey. Do mimes do caricatures? They don’t any more, because this mime is punched in the face by a hunk-a-hunka-a burning man meat who whisks Nottie under his arms and brings our trio back to his mansion for dinner. Awesome!

Phew - is it hot in here?

The man in question turns out to be a hunky Harvard graduate, ex-marine, dentist who was once on the cover of ‘Men’s Abs’. He treats Nottie like a princess and comments on how well maintained her teeth are, despite being super-crooked. Not a cavity in sight, he says, and offers to fix them for free. This makes Nate both jealous and suspicious – could Abs be working Nottie to get to Paris? Nate decides to keep his beady eyes on him and his gorgeous, muscular body.

They double date on a long mountain trek together. Paris and Abs are leading the way, but Nottie and Nate are suffering badly. Nate looks after Nottie to make sure she doesn’t die of exhaustion. By this point, Nottie has been spa-treated, skin-lasered and her teeth have been filed down and are awaiting veneers. She is covered in plasters where her moles have been removed. This could end up being a slow-motion She’s All That. The chemistry is growing between Nate and Nottie.

Abs continues to show Nate up in just about every way, infuriating him further. Nottie shares in Nate’s frustration and they have a giggle about it, behind Paris’s back. They both realise that Paris and Abs are just meat – tasty, tasty meat, but meat nonetheless. As time goes on, we see Nottie’s plasters removed and that she’s now wearing a hat due to a new bout of hair-growth medication. Despite the obvious sparks flying with Nottie, Nate still has his beady green eyes on Paris. But he blows it in a fit of jealousy when she dances with Abs – he leaps through the air and accidentally pushes Paris to the floor – he is so totally dumped.

New Nottie.

The following day, Nottie finds Nate moping in a café. She’s at the end of her ‘ascension to beauty norms’: she has a full head of hair, pure skin, Hollywood teeth and she wears tighter clothes so we can see her slinky figure. For once, she and Nate get to spend some alone time together. She takes him home for dinner and they have a lovely evening in each other’s company until they argue over whether he meant to kiss when they first met, or whether he fell into her face. Frustrated, he grabs her face and gives her a proper kiss to settle the ‘never been kissed’ issue. Stunned, he says, ‘I don’t know why I did that.’ which super-upsets Nottie as she’s totally digging on Nate boy right now, for realz. She tells him to bugger off, in no uncertain terms.

Everyone turns up for a costume party and for Nottie, tonight is the night she’s going to give her virginity to Abs. She’s ready to cross that barrier. Unfortunately, Nate has seen that Abs has been a little bit of an arrogant dick. I don’t mean a lot, I mean he said he likes how grateful Nottie acts for hookinh up with a great guy like him. In all other aspects, Abs is a saint. But this isn’t good enough for Nate who attacks Abs and gets a total beat-down for his trouble. Oh Nate – you like Nottie, don’t you see?

Paris is won over by Nate’s protective attitude for Nottie and tries to bed him, but Nate admits he’s fallen for Nottie after all. Paris (who says losing him is no big deal as she can get any man she wants) tells him to go for it, before she gives her virginity to Abs! This film has become a race to save the hymen! It’s all a bit… creepy?

Ever wondered what Paris Hilton would look like a virginal bride?

Nate catches Nottie and reveals his feelings for her – not because she’s hot now, but because he wants her to have someone who loves her for who she is. They kiss. The film ends immediately.

–

Here’s the thing about The Hottie and the Nottie: it wasn’t that bad. I mean… the acting was bad and some of the gross out stuff was… well, it was gross. But the premise of the film was OK. I’m really not into calling people ugly or humour based on body-fascism (for want of a better phrase) but this film spent time painting everyone who treated the Nottie badly as arseholes and worked on Nate bonding with the Nottie well, well before she completed her transformation into a fully-fledged swan. Paris Hilton is the MacGuffin of this film – she barely does anything, but exists to catalyse the Nottie/Nate/Abs relationship. Having the Nottie so far removed from convention did make me interested in how the film would play out, which is a good way to make a film.

And if you’re interested – this is the actress that plays the Nottie:

If you liked this, why not check out Paris’ other great movie experience, Pledge This!?

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