By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Comedy has always been difficult to get right, which might be why studios today have seemingly abandoned the genre, because great comedy requires taking an equally great risk. Few comedians have gone as far as the Wayans brothers, Marlon and Shawn, when they decided dressing up as white women would be the centerpiece of a feature film. White Chicks should never have worked, and if it was made a few years before or after 2004, it would have never been greenlit, but what no one could have guessed would be, 20 years later, it would be a huge hit on social media and still finding new fans thanks to streaming on Max.
White Chicks Knows It’s Stupid
Shawn and Marlon Wayans play FBI agents Kevin and Marcus, who go undercover as Brittany and Tiffany Wilson, two stereotypical wealthy socialites, in order to prevent a kidnapping. The prosthetic masks that the Wayans wear are obviously fake, but in the world of White Chicks, it’s waved away as the result of surgery, and besides, this is not a film that requires any amount of deep thought. It’s crude, it’s lewd, it’s raunchy, and it’s also surprisingly wholesome.
Once Kevin and Marcus, as Brittany and Tiffany, meet up with the girl’s friends, Karen (Busy Philips), Lisa (Jennifer Carpenter) and Tori (Jessica Cauffel), after the initial shock of going “from Cameron Diaz to J-Lo” wears off, the girls accept the surgery explanation and to its credit, White Chicks doesn’t dwell on it, with each character taking at face value that these two black men are white women. Even basketball star Latrell Spencer (Terry Crews) is fooled, quickly falling for Marcus/Tiffany, even winning a date at a Date Auction (another relic of the early-aughts). The real humor of the film isn’t from black male FBI agents posting as white women, it’s from talented comedic performers cutting loose with old-school physical comedy and a constant barrage of one-liners.
From Worst Movie Of All Time To A Social Media Sensation
When White Chicks was first released, it was dismissed as one of the worst films ever made, but once social media exploded and a new generation got their hands on it, the nightclub dance-off became a sensation, and then there’s Terry Crews. In a scene that was improvised and done in a single take, Crews dances and sings along to Vanessa Carlton’s “One Thousand Miles,” and in doing so, proves that he is a national treasure who must be protected at all costs. Great comedians know how to make themselves the butt of the joke, and everyone on set was willing to look like an idiot if it would make the audience laugh.
While that’s resulted in plenty of amazing clips for TikTok, and the nightclub dance battle was recreated 15 years later on Busy Philips’ late-night show, Busy Tonight, even at the time, White Chicks was considered controversial. With a 15 percent rotten rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and only a 55 percent audience approval rating, even today the film’s artistic reception pales in comparison to the impact it’s had on the general public.
The Wayans family has been enshrined as one of the most successful comedic forces in Hollywood, even today, with another Scary Movie on the way, and it’s hard to imagine White Chicks could have ever worked with a different team behind the camera. It’s one of the greatest examples of the sum being greater than the parts, as every scene was, somehow, able to come together to create a film filled with rapid-fire one-liners, goofy physical comedy, and a brilliant take down of the tabloid culture that pervaded 2004 when socialites could break the law and their “bad girl” behavior only made them even more famous and successful. The movie’s a hit on Max, a hit on social media, and at this point, it’s a cult comedy classic that every year, will only find more fans willing to look past the headlines and judge the film for themselves.
White Chicks is now streaming on Max.
