Spoiler Alert If you don't know the difference between "hip hop" and "IHOP," let me recommend that you save the chips you intended to spend on Malibu's Most Wanted and use them to attend this week's other worthwhile comedy release, A Mighty Wind. While both comedies focus on music, you don't need to know a damn thing about folk to get some solid laughs out of A Mighty Wind, but you do need to have at least an elementary knowledge of the current and past hip hop, rap and gangsta scenes to consider Malibu's Most Wanted to be "off the hizzook." So if you don't know rap from a deliciously stuffed french toast dispensary, stop reading here: you're going to inevitably disagree with this review. If even the thought of a hardcore rapper from Malibu elicits giggles, continue reading: this film should be right up your alley.
In Malibu's Most Wanted Jamie Kennedy (Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, The Jamie Kennedy Experience) plays Brad Gluckman, but would prefer it if you called him "B-Rad." In a plot reminiscent of Tommy Boy, yet another lowbrow comedy that I enjoyed, B-Rad is an embarrassment to the family business, which this time is politics. The twist in Malibu is that, unlike the father to Chris Farley's Tommy, played with gusto by Brian Dennehy, B-Rad's dad, Bill Gluckman (Ryan O'Neal) does not approve of his son's lifestyle.
Bill Gluckman is running for Governor at the same time that Brad "B-Rad" Gluckman is running to be the first upper-class white "gangsta" from "the 'Bu." The two cultures clash and the senior Gluckman is convinced that he has to find a way to scare the black out of his Caucasian coffee-shop hangin' boy not so in the 'hood. The elder Gluckman's campaign manager Tom Gibbons (Blair Underwood) puts together a plan to have B-Rad snatched up by two "real" original gangstas, who will take him on the ride of his life by exposing him to the seedy underbelly of rap deep in the heart of Compton.
Convinced that this is the next best thing to having each of B-Rad's phat rhymes surgically removed from his brain, Bill Gluckman agrees with the plan. The only problem? The wanna-be Governor and his manager wouldn't know an original gangsta from Will Smith and end up hiring two unemployed actors that they feel fit the part due to nothing more than the color of their skin. The scheming couple winds up with Sean (Taye Diggs) and P.J. (Anthony Anderson), two of the whitest black men you'll ever see.
Once B-Rad is picked up and brought into the ghetto, Sean and P.J. wind up being the ones afraid and B-Rad turns out to love it. Comical hi-jinks ensue, some of them spot-on funny, and others as mind-numbing as those featured in director John Whitesell's horrid See Spot Run. Ironically, it isn't Whitesell's mediocrity behind the camera that nearly kills this comedy as much as the film's PG-13 rating.
A movie about hardcore rap needs to have some hardcore language to be believable. Especially when Snoop Dogg makes his appearance. It's obvious that the film was largely self-censored in its attempt to get the PG-13 rating that it finally received.
Jamie Kennedy succeeds in making a watered-down B-Rad a likable character, and I found myself laughing throughout the entire 90 minutes just thinking that the life of B-Rad is probably closer to Eminem's real life past than the life of Bunny Rabbit was in Em's own film, 8 Mile. Taye Digg's performance as Sean is tailor made for a PG-13 film, on the other hand, and he delivers in spades. I'm still waiting for Diggs to make it into the world of super-stardom. He proves that he's a superb actor in every film that he's been in (as long as you ignore his gig in last year's New Best Friend).
Although most people will have predicted the sappy ending before even watching the beginning, the comical performances throughout the film and the farcical premise of the movie make it a moderately fun ride getting there. Last year at this time, I would have leaned toward giving this film a negative review. This year, after the glut of culture-clash "comedies," bad enough to unify all cultures in a sick sort of nausea, Malibu's Most Wanted plays like A Midsummer's Night Dream.
In Malibu's Most Wanted Jamie Kennedy (Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, The Jamie Kennedy Experience) plays Brad Gluckman, but would prefer it if you called him "B-Rad." In a plot reminiscent of Tommy Boy, yet another lowbrow comedy that I enjoyed, B-Rad is an embarrassment to the family business, which this time is politics. The twist in Malibu is that, unlike the father to Chris Farley's Tommy, played with gusto by Brian Dennehy, B-Rad's dad, Bill Gluckman (Ryan O'Neal) does not approve of his son's lifestyle.
Bill Gluckman is running for Governor at the same time that Brad "B-Rad" Gluckman is running to be the first upper-class white "gangsta" from "the 'Bu." The two cultures clash and the senior Gluckman is convinced that he has to find a way to scare the black out of his Caucasian coffee-shop hangin' boy not so in the 'hood. The elder Gluckman's campaign manager Tom Gibbons (Blair Underwood) puts together a plan to have B-Rad snatched up by two "real" original gangstas, who will take him on the ride of his life by exposing him to the seedy underbelly of rap deep in the heart of Compton.
Convinced that this is the next best thing to having each of B-Rad's phat rhymes surgically removed from his brain, Bill Gluckman agrees with the plan. The only problem? The wanna-be Governor and his manager wouldn't know an original gangsta from Will Smith and end up hiring two unemployed actors that they feel fit the part due to nothing more than the color of their skin. The scheming couple winds up with Sean (Taye Diggs) and P.J. (Anthony Anderson), two of the whitest black men you'll ever see.
Once B-Rad is picked up and brought into the ghetto, Sean and P.J. wind up being the ones afraid and B-Rad turns out to love it. Comical hi-jinks ensue, some of them spot-on funny, and others as mind-numbing as those featured in director John Whitesell's horrid See Spot Run. Ironically, it isn't Whitesell's mediocrity behind the camera that nearly kills this comedy as much as the film's PG-13 rating.
A movie about hardcore rap needs to have some hardcore language to be believable. Especially when Snoop Dogg makes his appearance. It's obvious that the film was largely self-censored in its attempt to get the PG-13 rating that it finally received.
Jamie Kennedy succeeds in making a watered-down B-Rad a likable character, and I found myself laughing throughout the entire 90 minutes just thinking that the life of B-Rad is probably closer to Eminem's real life past than the life of Bunny Rabbit was in Em's own film, 8 Mile. Taye Digg's performance as Sean is tailor made for a PG-13 film, on the other hand, and he delivers in spades. I'm still waiting for Diggs to make it into the world of super-stardom. He proves that he's a superb actor in every film that he's been in (as long as you ignore his gig in last year's New Best Friend).
Although most people will have predicted the sappy ending before even watching the beginning, the comical performances throughout the film and the farcical premise of the movie make it a moderately fun ride getting there. Last year at this time, I would have leaned toward giving this film a negative review. This year, after the glut of culture-clash "comedies," bad enough to unify all cultures in a sick sort of nausea, Malibu's Most Wanted plays like A Midsummer's Night Dream.