Hi Martin,
Sure you can, with a little JavaScript digging.
The question is if it is really worth it, and if you will really get the results you are looking for.
First, as you probably know, the rerendering of the form is minimal if you simply change one control. Secondly, I doubt that you will get away with no request sent to the server, because if you need to status of the control to be updated to the server side, you will need to issue a request anyway.
In order to get some JavaScript invoked, you can for instance use:
this.checkBox1.RegisterClientAction("alert","hello");
Hope this helps,
Palli