White Chicks
Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans
By Peter Knegt

From In Living Color to the Scary Movies, the Wayans Brothers have become a trusted Hollywood entity for providing mindless toilet humour parodies. The newly released White Chicks (directed by Keenan, starring Shawn and Marlon, and written by all three of them) is no exception. Though incredibly immature and often ridiculous, the film still fulfils its purpose in providing hard laughs with little thought.

This time around, Marlon and Shawn portray Marcus and Kevin, two F.B.I. agents that go undercover to protect the young heiresses of a large corporation, the Wilson sisters (Anne Dudek and Maitland Ward, most likely cast for the physical structures of their faces, as opposed to their extreme lack of talent). Except, get this, Marcus and Kevin actually undergo a seemingly simple makeup procedure to gain the physical appearance of the sisters (it seems in just a few minutes they accomplish what a group of makeup artists would take several hours to do). Various untimely scenarios ensue as the pair are sent on a wild weekend in the Hamptons to wine, dine and party just like Paris and Nikki, er, Brittany and Tiffany.

There is so much that is wrong with White Chicks: its humour rides the fine line between parody and theft, and plays on nearly every comedic film cliché imaginable (a dance off sequence, diarrhoea, even “your mama” jokes). The extravagant makeup job to transform the two grown black men into a pair of young, white debutants manages to occasionally come off as unbelievable or even creepy. Yet, somehow, if you look beyond all its obvious flaws, you might just find yourself enjoying this film.

The humour, though unoriginal, is at times exceptionally hilarious (especially when involving Terry Crews as a football player with the hots for the pseudo-Tiffany), and you can take comfort in the fact that White Chicks was probably intended to be this stupid, just like the Wayans Brothers creations that preceded it. (Columbia TriStar)
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