by SCOTT C

When I turned on the TV last week and saw Oprah hosting a full hour dedicated to the comic genius of the Wayans family, I knew they'd be pushing White Chicks, the new movie directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, and starring Marlon and younger brother Shawn. What I didn't expect to see was how amused the predominantly white female studio audience was with these clowns. Watching this movie in the theatre with a full house was no different.

The brothers play Marcus and Kevin Copeland, a couple of bumbling FBI agents who can't get on the right side of their boss. Through a series of asinine and convoluted clichés, they end up going undercover as rich white girls to foil a suspected kidnapping plot. They are able to infiltrate friends and family completely unsuspected, and carefully pull off this ridiculous covert operation, until things start to get hairy. That's pretty much the whole movie right there.

While I sat there in my holy shrine of comedy, waiting for a joke that I couldn't see coming a mile away, the entire packed house seemed to eat up the low-ball slapstick foolishness, gross-out humour, and never-ending fart jokes.

In fact, there's probably as many holes in the plot here as there are fart jokes, and somehow we're supposed to believe that both the black and white people in this movie don't really seem to see anything out of the ordinary with the brothers' horrifyingly unbelievable whiteface makeup, but that's of course besides the point. While literally overflowing with cross-cultural stereotypes and gross racial misconceptions that even the most ambitious scripts have had trouble grappling with, White Chicks succeeds in effectively dumbing it all down into a cheap, forgettable romp for the whole family.

Perhaps the funniest performance in this movie comes from muscle-bound actor Terry Crews. Playing a millionaire pro-baller who only likes "white meat," Crews spends all his time hanging out at rich, white affairs in the Hamptons looking for his next paramour. But unless you're a huge fan of the Wayans and their ability to overact, you should probably hold on to your money.

White Chicks opened Wednesday, June 23

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