dir. Keenen Ivory Wayans
It’s understandable that comedies from the early 2000s may not hold up so well decades ago, but White Chicks didn’t even hold up when it first landed. Marlon and Shawn Wayans play two FBI agent brothers who are charged with hunting down a kidnapper. The kidnapper is said to be targetting two sisters; very quickly, it’s decided the Wayans donning pale prosthetics and putting on squeaky voices to impersonate the girls is definitely the best thing to do. When this is the premise, it’s not a surprise that White Chicks’ humour falls flat on its face: sex jokes, toilet humour, funny faces, stereotyped behaviour, every hallmark of a bad 2000s comedy. It’s all underpinned with extremely weak stories following the brothers’ respective romantic plots. The worst thing, though, is while the film’s outlandish nature excuses lack of realism to some extent, the Wayans’ white prosthetic faces aren’t just unconvincing, they’re downright scary. Their stiff pale faces look like embalmed corpses. Their eyes are sunken yet shallow. Their mouths are rigid. It is impossible to laugh at any zany misunderstandings when the titular characters are so disturbing to look at. White Chicks already fails miserably at its premise; the failure just doubles down with execution.
BMDb 