The Offensive 2000s Comedy On Hulu We Still Can’t Believe Is Real
In the modern world of cinema, some movies come straight out of the gate with a premise that sounds like a bonafide hit, while others sound more like a bizarre fever dream of a Weird Al Yankovich parody. One example of the latter is 2004’s White Chicks, which is currently streaming on Hulu. This patently offensive film has become a cult classic for its absolutely off-the-walls premise, which we still can’t believe is real 20 years after release.
The Wayans
White Chicks is one of many projects headed by the Wayans family, who have planted firm generational roots in the world of screwball comedy since family patriarch Keenan Ivory Wayans launched In Living Color in 1990.
Keenan serves as the writer and director of White Chicks, with his two brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans taking on the starring roles. Additional performers rounding out the cast include John Heard, Busy Philipps, and Terry Crews, in one of his funniest roles of all time.
Cosmetic Injuries
White Chicks centers on a pair of brothers working for the FBI, who intend to halt a major drug trafficking syndicate while serving as bodyguards for a couple of wealthy white women.
Early in the film, however, the girls sustain major cosmetic injuries to the face, forcing them to hide from the public because of their extremely vapid nature.
Now, if you know nothing about this film, I’d like you to stop and guess where this premise is going before reading the next sentence.
Posing As White Chicks
If you guessed that the two Black men would don heavy makeup and movie-grade prosthetics in order to pose as a pair of Kardashian-level famous white chicks and attend a series of socialite galas across Manhattan, congratulations, you hit the nail on the head.
The result is a spectacularly absurd movie that feels like one of the trailers from the beginning of Tropic Thunder leapt right off of the screen and into the office of an executive with a serious drug problem.
Awkward!
As the narrative of White Chicks continues, the film utilizes a comedic lens to examine things like sexuality, gender identity, and racial politics, with a healthy sprinkling of diarrhea jokes thrown into the mix for good measure.
I normally don’t like regurgitating the common refrain that “a movie like this simply couldn’t be made today,” but I genuinely don’t think it would be possible to bring this film to market in today’s cultural landscape.
Especially considering one particularly awkward scene which sees a car full of actual white women rapping the N word because “nobody’s around” to chastise them for it.
Stream It Now
GFR SCORE
White Chicks was critically panned upon release, and currently maintains an impressive 15 percent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.
This is partially because the writing is positively bonkers, partially because the jokes are highly juvenile, and partly because Shawn and Marlon Wayans’ white girl makeup looks like it was done by a team of interns at the local morgue.
Despite its poor reviews, the film has gone down as a cult classic in the hearts and minds of slapstick comedy fans who grew up consuming offensive humor in the early 2000s.
If you’d like to check out White Chicks today, the film is currently streaming on Hulu. Just be sure to clear your cache and cookies after viewing, lest the TikTok mob label you with the scarlet letter of being ‘problematic.’
