White Chicks (2004)

Okay, let's get this out of the way: This is not a very good movie. In fact, it's quite bad. It's loaded with fart and poop jokes and labored sitcom contrivances and running gags that don't pay off. But buried deep inside the lockstep punchpress screenplay is a scathing satire on race and white privilege, the kind of film you could imagine the "In Living Color"-era Wayanses making. Every now and then the film's hidden aspirations surface, usually in a throwaway line or bit of business, but then there's the alarming and funny scene in the car that you've likely seen in the trailer (it's the scene with that damn Vanessa Carlton song). The punchline to this scene, which is not something I expected to find in a dumb summer comedy, suggests the point at which a total rewrite could have been done, resulting in a nasty and brave comedy instead of a stupid and safe one. But then, satire doesn't sell. So we're stuck with this instead, in which two Wayans brothers parade around in the least convincing makeup work since the heyday of the Italian zombie movie. More's the pity.

Grade: C