E-Mail This Article to a Friend WHITE CHICKS

The Wayans brothers, director Keenen Ivory and actors Shawn and Marlon, turn both racial and gender stereotypes on their head in this farce revolving around two black FBI agents disguised as white heiresses in the Hamptons. The dynamic duo, Marcus (Marlon) and Kevin (Shawn), screw up sufficiently to earn themselves a job babysitting two vacuous blonde socialites, and when they botch that, they (with the aide of a SWAT make-up team) go undercover as the peroxide sisters, Tiffany and Brittany Wilson. The film amounts to a 90-minute hip-hop spoof on Nicole Ritchie and the pouty-lipped Paris Hilton from The Simple Life. And though it’s humorous to see the Wayanses try to pass in the whitest and most female of situations, it’s even funnier to see a wealthy black athlete (an über-buff Terry Crews) with a taste for white women chase after Marcus in drag. White Chicks doesn’t have quite the zip of the Wayanses’ 2000 success, Scary Movie, but the recurring use of Micelle Branch’s tinny music and dicy phrases like "Arnold Schwarzen-nigger" from the lips of super-sized Tiffany and Brittany sustain this comedy’s skin-deep charm. (105 minutes)