Review: White Chicks (2004)

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. “We?” Kevin, this ain’t about “we.” It’s never been. It’s about you. You come up with some stupid idea and I’m dumb enough to go along with it.”
– Marcus Copeland

SYNOPSIS: Two disgraced FBI agents go way undercover in an effort to protect hotel heiresses the Wilson sisters from a kidnapping plot. – via IMDB

I can’t help it. It is so bad but so entertaining in the most brain dead kind of way. In general, I absolutely hate movies like this, and yet this one entertains me so much. Maybe it is the nostalgia, who knows? But man, this just works for me and it should not. Gosh it is an instance of something so bad it is actually good.

Now that I can move on past my personal guilty pleasure disclaimer, let’s talk about the movie… not that there is really much to say or an awful lot to praise, but let’s talk about it anyway.

Shawn and Marlon Wayans really get into this, which I think is something that works for the movie. In fact, all the actors and actresses involved know exactly what kind of movie this is and they roll with it, and it totally works. The brothers are suitably ridiculous as the Wilson sisters, and their antics really did make me laugh. One can never, ever forget Terry Crews in this, as one will never hear Vanessa Carlton’s A Thousand Miles the same way again. The man has an absolute ball as Latrell Spencer, and his enthusiasm comes across plain and simple.

The plot is so thin, and yet the movie goes about it with gusto. Shut your brain off at the door and don’t even remotely try to make this a hypothetically realistic scenario, and you will be able to laugh at the ludicrous Prada handbag jokes, silly dance-offs, plenty bitchiness and have a good time with these two idiots running around trying to be fantastic FBI agents by impersonating two super shallow rich trust fun babies. I did think that there was just a bit too much toilet humour the movie could totally have done without.

You gotta admit that a lot of work went into making this Wayans brothers white women, as they did look a little creepy (let’s not pretend otherwise), but you cannot deny that it was a pretty damn solid transformation. The writing, too, with the silly jokes and all is actually quite fun, especially if you are looking for a fluffy, light movie to make you smile.

White Chicks is stupid but entertaining. I know most people dismiss it as outright terrible, and, well, it is kinda terrible in an amusing way (for me). The cast has fun, the soundtrack works with it, and it delivers exactly the kind of movie you would expect from the poster, and I appreciate that. That being said, I don’t know how I would have felt about this if I didn’t have the teenage nostalgia to go with it.

Banshee: Season 2 (2014)

*CONTAINS SPOILERS*

What I liked:

• Hood and Siobhan finally getting their thing on. Seriously, I am so freaking over anything that is Carrie related it is insane, so to have him moving on in life is really good.
• Watching Gordon’s collapse after Carrie left. That poor dude so didn’t deserve what he got.
• Matthew Rauch as Clay Burton. I know that I have mentioned him before, and I can see myself mentioning him again time and time again, but this is just something amazing. I don’t think I will ever get over it. I absolutely adore the man, and I would. He is all messed up and creepy and gives me chills. As if this wasn’t bad enough, there was the episode, Armies of One, and he just capped his terrifying iceberg. That whole scene was a thing of pure beauty – the kill, the clean up, the music, the flashbacks…
• The intro. I still really like it, and the hints it gives and the story it tells. It is nice and different and I like that.
• The Banshee Sheriff’s Department. I think the characters are great and were wonderfully cast there, and I think it is really entertaining to watch the way they are totally being changed by Hood.
• Watching Burton observing Rebecca, having no faith.
• Job got so much time in this one, and we got more of a look at him and it was just awesome. Plus there was quite a bit of time dedicated to how unsuspectingly badass he can be.
• Nola Longshadow. I really wish she got more screen time, because she really is quite the complex character with all the potential in the world to be super interesting, and they are working well with that so far.
• Methodic Doubt’s score. It works well with the show and is suiting.

What I didn’t like: 

• Again, so much sex all over the show. It does nothing to contribute to the plot or anything like that, it is just there.
• There are still so many fault and inconsistencies laced throughout the show, which is annoying. It is the one thing that really keeps throwing me back off of this.
• Nothing is ever getting done about Hood. Nobody seems to bust him, he is never getting reprimanded, nothing.
• Carrie. Still, nothing changes here. It was great to see less of her, and when we did it was strategically used, which was better. But still, every time she opens her mouth I want to throw something at her for how selfish and silly she is. Ugh.
• Rebecca’s uneven character growth. Sometimes she’s crying, sometimes she misses home, sometimes she thinks she’s badass. It could have just been done so much better and believably, instead it just irritates you quite a bit.
• The ridiculous amounts of cross-cutting that went on here. Don’t abuse that! Do it from time to time. It is like every other damn scene that carried some weight was laced with another one. I was so over it by the end of that. Not cool.

Rating:
I must say that I definitely thought that this was an improvement over the last season, though there are still plenty flaws within it to deal with. For once, when they brought in FBI Special Agent Jim Racine, I thought that someone was seriously going to turn up the heat. Obviously that didn’t happen, which was a disappointment. But oh well. I suppose we will just have to see what happens thereafter. Naturally, another someone would have to crop up to jeopardize Hood’s identity. This time it was Jason Hood, the real Lucas Hood’s son. It was just weird that Jason was not bothered whatsoever about his father being dead, and got into some shady business with Hood, who just wanted the kid gone. Instead, of course, there was some more extreme crazy drama for us to deal with.  Clay Burton thrilled me endlessly, as always. We get to see quite a bit more of him in this season, with some extreme flashbacks that are quite horrific. The more you see of Clay Burton, the scarier the guy becomes. Job and Sugar still entertain me with their sniping at one another the whole time. More subplots started making their appearance here, and I liked that. The show is finally broadening from the Hood/Carrie story and moving on to other things, which means less irritation and more interesting aspects being explored. Hood is definitely quite different since the last altercation with Rabbit, but he is still adamant that he will not leave town. The Neo-Nazi plot that came in concerning Emmett later was cool, and really got me pissy. Argh! I mean seriously now, people drive me insane. I felt so bad for Emmett, and I could totally understand why he did what he did, and all of that set a seriously hardcore chain of events into action. Rebecca and Kai are getting really close, and he is bringing her into the family business – something that I like and dislike. Things are moving way too quickly there, and can we mention that slightly-too-incestuous thing going on between them? The competition between Alex Longshadow and Kai Proctor is just awesome to watch, definitely a very entertaining part of the season. The rivalry is great, their conversations and fights as well as the mad things that they are doing at each other to get one another out of the way and in trouble and payback and all is heavy. Then there is the fact that it is so much better in this season to not see Lucas Hood so ridiculously hung up on Carrie… he is moving on, and it has finally come to pass that he is hooking up with Siobhan, the deputy that works for/with him. I have been waiting for this since season one. And good for Gordon for not just letting Carrie come home and carry on as she pleased, she is actually being held accountable for the crappy way she treated her family, and she still hasn’t told them everything. Each and every time some headway seems to be made, she goes and messes it up again royally, and offers exactly no explanation for it. Goodness, I have no idea why Carries are such central characters to shows and do nothing but irritate the hell out of me. The effects were alright here, but I really think the Carrie and Rabbit story arcs got a little bit convoluted towards the end, and I just wanted to reach through the screen and slap Gordon. I know he is having a really bad time, but he has a family that he needs to care for. I loved finally seeing what went down with Rabbit/Carrie/Lucas, but I must admit that I was extremely underwhelmed after the intense build up that it received. Either way, there were worse ways that it could have gone. It was just a really big deal for nothing. Flaws and all, it seems that the longer you watch Banshee, the better and more entertaining it becomes.