Malibu's Most Wanted Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)May 13th, 2003
Malibu's Most Wanted
Rental plus snacks
Don't be hatin'. I don't blame you for not wanting to see this movie - I nearly didn't - but a desperation for some escapist farce, an over-exposure to the current new releases, and a limited selection at the local drive-in (hey, $6!) is all that got me into the theatre. And I like Jamie Kennedy. I was determined to make the best of it, so at first when I laughed aloud, I figured it was plain old faking it. But then it happened again, and again. Enter Taye Diggs and Anthony Anderson as classically trained Oreos, struggling to recreate the gangsta lifestyle that Kennedy's character Rodney, er, B-Rad, lives so effortlessly, and it happened a LOT.
I gotta tell you, I laughed just about the whole movie, as did my companion. The trick to stupid-style comedy is its earnestness, and these guys have that out the wazoo. Kennedy co-wrote the film, and his nutty B-Rad is so sweet and clueless that you have to respect him for his artless purity of heart, no matter how stoopid and phat he acts. Diggs and Anderson are equally hapless and really they cracked me up even more than Kennedy. And there it is. With an amusingly modern dilemma, an awfully likeable cast, and a parade of stereotype mockery, Malibu's Most Wanted is just a fun, silly, likeable movie all around.
Hip hop historian (really) Kevin Powell describes movies like these as a cultural safari for white people. While it's true I would probably have never been inclined to see a movie that's so hazee fo shazee without the hook of black guys trying to bleach out a suburban white boy, it's clear that both shades of the stereotypes are played for both irony and tolerance. Wigga culture is a source of amusement and derision for both sides of the racial divide, as evidenced by their reduction to comic foil in major comedy films such as Can't Hardly Wait, Barbershop, and Not Another Teen Movie. We mock them for being so clueless as to their "real" culture. What Malibu wants to show us (with laughter) is that maybe they really feel most at home in that style of culture, and is it any less stereotypical to say all white people have to wear plaid and dance like they have sticks up their butts?
At first I figured it was the mojo of the drive-in that made the movie so much fun. The next day, half-embarrassed that I had even seen it, I was telling some coworkers abut the movie, and it cracked me up again! I'm not saying it's the greatest, most sublime thing ever, it's not the Citizen Kane of wigga mockery (that would be Can't Hardly Wait), but the execution is simply good clean hilarious fun. The idea of black Julliard alumni trying to get their ghetto on in order to scare feckless B-Rad back to "proper" whitehood is funny. Bring in "real" playas in the 'hood, sadly painful rapping, and a you-go-girl sista, and it's all around fun. It's a cute little romp through race, identity, and cultural stereotypes, that doesn't slap its audience in the face like Bringing Down The House. And, big bonus, parents, it's an uninsulting statement about the importance of being who you really are. Give it a try, you might like it as much as I did. And lord, the slang. Bring someone cool to translate for you.
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These reviews (c) 2003 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can check out previous reviews at:
http://www.cinerina.com and http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource
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