Shoddy 'Hottie' embraces hypocrisy, shallowness

"The Hottie and the Nottie" is a snotty, shoddy, thematically knotty romantic comedy that lectures us about looking beyond appearances to find the real beauty inside people.

So why doesn't the main male character fall in love with the ugly "nottie" girl before she gets her teeth fixed, her bald patches patched, her skin cleared up, her infected toenails healed, and her hairy legs depilated?

The answer: Because "The Hottie and the Nottie" has no clue that the moral of the story it shows us completely undermines the moral of the story it tells us.

MOVIE REVIEW "The Hottie and the Nottie" 1 star out of fourStarring: Paris Hilton, Joel David Moore and Christine LakinDirected by:Tom PutnamOther: A Regent Releasing release. Rated PG-13 (sexual situations). Running time: 91 minutes.

This hypocritical rom-com bomb, raiding major plot points from the fun teen comedy "10 Things I Hate About You," centers around a loser named Nate Cooper (Joel David Moore).

Since first grade, he has harbored a crush on cute, vivacious Cristabel Abbott. With help from a slobby former classmate named Arno Blount (played by The Greg Wilson, with the article officially attached), Nate locates Cristabel in California.

She has grown to be a fetching feminine creature played by alluring socialite Paris Hilton. Nate literally bumps into her during a jog. Nate thinks he has a shot, especially when she says, "A day without orgasms is like a life without flowers!"

There's just one catch.

Cristabel says that she has sworn off dating until her ridiculously unattractive, sore-infected best friend June (Christine Lakin) has a date. Or at least sex.

"The Hottie and the Nottie" (we can guess which one is which, can't we?) sends Nate on a quest to pimp for June. He goes so far as to pay $500 to a nerd (Adam Kulbersh) for stud service. At a picnic, Nate makes up a name for the nerdy suitor: Cole Slawsen.

Yep. That's the level of humor in Heidi Ferrer's flaccid script, directed without dramatic flair or comic timing by Tom Putnam.

Moore looks like a dead ringer for beatnik Maynard G. Krebs from the 1950s TV sitcom "Dobie Gillis." Even weirder, Moore employs the same voice and gestures of David Schwimmer's Ross Geller from TV's "Friends."

Meanwhile, Lakin must have just finished watching a Jodie Foster film marathon before playing June. She has duplicated the Oscar-winning star's mannerisms right down to her voice.

Amazingly, Hilton acquits herself nicely as Nate's lip-glossed fantasy girl. Ever since her amateur sex tape was leaked, the hotel heiress has milked her image as the Marilyn Chambers/Linda Lovelace of the Internet age. Playing a shallow, sexually confident young woman looks pretty easy for her.

Nonetheless, the filmmakers have no clue their movie celebrates the very thing it condemns: judgments based on surface appearances.

They should have taken a tip from "Love Actually," where Prime Minister Hugh Grant keeps hearing how chubby his assistant, Martine McCutcheon, is. She looks beautiful, not chubby. Why?

Because we are seeing her through Grant's eyes, and the lens of love has filtered out her imperfections.

"The Hottie" could have employed this simple concept, but like Hilton's character, it's content to embrace shallowness.