White Chicks
Sitting through “White Chicks” made me hanker for a root canal. With any luck, a miscalculation would drive the drill into my brain and dig out the infected gray matter.
If bad ideas were butter, “White Chicks” would be margarine. It’s an insipid spread of bad jokes, scary make-up and patently offensive behavior. Throw in the white bread notion that Shawn and Marlon Wayans could even pass as pasty debutantes and you end up with a film that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
While some people don’t mind being spoon-fed crap, anyone with taste will see right through this gender-bender comedy. “White Chicks” doesn’t merely require you to suspend disbelief, it demands it. Under tons of latex, wigs, contact lens and fake boobs, Shawn and Marlon Wayans play disgraced FBI agents forced to go way undercover as two rich, white socialite sisters (think the Hilton sisters).
After their incompetence leaves socialite sisters Brittany and Tiffany Wilson damaged goods, agents Kevin Copeland (Shawn) and Marcus (Marlon) end up impersonating the sisters to thwart a kidnapping plot. When the “sisters” return back to school, they’re greeted with enthusiasm (and just a little apprehension) by their sorority sisters, who contribute the change in their looks to plastic surgery.
Forget the fact that Brittany and Tiffany look like football players, or that their make-up makes Joan Rivers look springtime fresh. If we’re expected to suspend disbelief, then the characters in the film are required to play stupid, and that pretty much sums it up. The six writers occasionally manage to come up with a funny line or situation, but the nature of the beast requires the actors to play each and every scene as broad as possible.
Like at the end of every episode of “South Park,” the agents learn a valuable lesson, but at whose expense? Most of the film the characters play to the lowest common denominator and then they expect us to accept their sudden cognizance. It’s like tucking their penis between their legs and listening to bland white girl pop makes Kevin and Marcus better women. Like black actors playing white women, they’re just fooling themselves.
It’s difficult to fathom that the Wayans brothers (Shawn, Marlon, and director Keenan Ivory) passed on “Scary Movie 3,” the franchise they developed at Dimension Films, to make “White Chicks.” As evident in their previous works (collectively and individually) the Wayans are funny dudes (and sister Kim is a real hoot), but they really miss the mark with “White Chicks,” which probably sounded like a good idea on a waded up cocktail napkin.
Chicks With Icks
Wayans Brothers undergo boob job
WHITE CHICKS
Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Jaime King, Frankie Faison, Lochlyn Monroe, John Heard. Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans. Rated PG-13. 107 Minutes.
LARSEN RATING: $1.00
