| “ | I dont' know what to do if things were so perfect. | „ |
| ~ Jessica Spencer |
Jessica Marie Spencer is a 18-year-old nasty high school girl who later turned good, and the main protagonist of the 2002 body-swapping comedy film The Hot Chick.
She accidentally switched bodies with the low-life criminal named Clive Maxtone via a pair of enchanted earrings.
She was portrayed by Rachel McAdams, who portrayed Christine Palmer and her Earth-838 counterpart in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and also voiced different versions of Palmer and a disguised Strange Supreme in the Disney+ tv series What If...? and Lisa Reisert in Red Eye. In Clive's body, she is portrayed by Rob Schiender.
Biography[]
In the present day, Jessica Spencer is a popular high school girl in suburban California with her friends April, Keecia, and Lulu. April is Jessica's best friend and all four girls are cheerleaders.
In the beginning of the film, Jessica starts off as obnoxious and selfish. At school one day, Jessica makes fun of a bigger girl named Hildenburg and a wiccan girl named Eden.
After that, Jessica and her friends visit the local mall where Jessica frames her rival Bianca for shoplifting and finds the earrings in an African-themed store. The earrings are not for sale, so Jessica steals them.
Shortly afterward, a small-time criminal named Clive Maxtone robs a nearby gas station. When Jessica and her friends stop there and mistake him for an employee, he services their car to avoid raising suspicion.
Jessica accidentally drops one of the earrings on the ground, and Clive picks it up after the girls drive away. That evening, Jessica and Clive put on their earrings.
When they wake up the next morning, each of them is trapped in the other's body. This is especially difficult for Jessica, who has a cheerleading competition and the school prom coming up soon. While at first difficult, Jessica convinces April, Keecia, and Lulu of her true identity.
The girls write a list of suspects of who could be responsible. They first seek Hildenburg, where Jessica apologizes for humiliating her in front of the entire school during the basketball game earlier, and the two make amends.
They soon seek Eden, where Jessica also apologizes for her jealousy of Eden getting the only "A" on a report of the Salem witch trials. Eden reveals an ancient Latin witchcraft called "Santeria", which originated in Africa, and found its way into Cuba and Brazil.
Lulu ties this connection to Bianca, but Eden reveals that only a tattoo of a scorpion on her back could confirm this.
While investigating at a dance club called 'Instant Tang', Bianca is proven innocent after Jessica rips her shirt to see if she has the tattoo which she doesn't.
The girls then find a picture of the earrings on the internet, and the girls post fliers all over town. They also get help from Keecia's awkward mother and Venetia and Sissie, twin sisters who are on Jessica's cheerleading squad.
The girls tell this to Madame Mambuza, the owner of the African store at the mall. Madame Mambuza tells the girls the story of Princess Nawa, who, after switching bodies, was unaware that she had to bring the earrings back together.
Nawa lived the rest of her life in the slave's body. Jessica could suffer the same fate if she does not unite the earrings before the end of the full moon.
Meanwhile, Jessica is hired for two jobs while secretly living with April. At her home, where she works as a gardener named Taquito. Her parents tell her about their marital problems, and she helps them rekindle their sex life.
At school, while cleaning the boys' locker room as a janitor, she spies on her boyfriend Billy who truly loves her and April's boyfriend Jake, who secretly has another girlfriend named Monique.
Faced with Jake's infidelity, April breaks up with him, and Jessica agrees to take her to the prom. At the cheerleading competition, Jessica signals romantically to Billy while disguised as the school mascot, but when the head of her suit falls off, he becomes confused and leaves with Bianca.
During this time, Clive has been using Jessica's body to make money from men, including Billy, who gives him his money and car, believing he is Jessica.
On the evening of the prom, Hildenburg sees a video of Clive robbing a man on the television news and goes to the scene of the crime.
After finding a business card for the club where Clive works as a pole dancer, she informs Jessica at the prom, and the girls go to the club.
When they find Clive, Jessica steals back the earring and puts it on herself along with the other one. With the two earrings now on the same person, Jessica's and Clive's bodies return to their original owners. Clive is subsequently arrested after cops show up to the strip club, having been notified about Clive’s whereabouts by the principal of Jessica’s school, when Jessica was still in Clive’s body.
After Jessica makes up with Billy, the film ends with the school's graduation ceremony where Keecia and her mother reconcile.
Later that night, Clive, running from the law and still dressed in lingerie and handcuffs, jumps into the car of the same bartender Jessica encountered in the body of Clive.
The bartender smiles and locks the car door. The movie ends with the car speeding away and Clive turning around and screaming.
Trivia[]
- She's similar to Carlota Casagrande in Nickelodeon's The Loud House and its spin-off The Casagrandes.
- She's also similar to Frankie Foster in the 2004 Cartoon Network show Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and its upcoming spin-off.
- Jessica's car is a custom VW convertible bug which Rachel McAdams told the crew on the first day of shooting.
- The filmmakers did an exhaustive 5 continent 3 month for casting the role of Jessica Spencer. Rachel McAdams auditioned for another part but she was picked for Jessica.
- Rachel McAdams appreciates working with Rob Schneider and she found him helpful.
- The gag where Clive was hit by Jessica's hood and beeping horn was based on a beautiful girl Rob Schneider knew. She and her friends get together on weekends before the mall and torture guys at gas stations by beeping the horn when they check their fluids.
- Tom Brady wrote in the first draft that Jessica's house is a big sprawling house with a second story that she can climb out and into a tree to give the sense of an American family. The filmmakers did location scouting for the house and ended up in Hancock Park in Los Angeles which is exactly how he had written it. The house was filmed on the first week of shooting.
- Rachel McAdams was cast not just because of her beauty and she can embody masculine traits well.
