Malibu's Most Wanted

Movie Title: Malibu's Most Wanted
Official Website (it might still work): Malibu's Most Wanted
Rating (out of 10): 5
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens
Buy the: Video/DVD \| Soundtrack
The Review:

Vanilla Ice, ice baby. The Beastie Boys. Eminem, all white, all rappers, and all mocked at some point as phonies or gimmicks. Now you can add B-Rad to the list cuz Bu’s blackest white guy is keepin’ it real in the hood. All right, not really, but that is what Malibu’s Most Wanted is all about, satire and parody.

This B-Rad character is really Brad Gluckman (Jamie Kennedy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), a privileged white kid growing up in the anti-ghetto Malibu, California, or Bu (boo) for short. There Brad and his posse hang at the mall trying (like all the suburban kids) to be gansta’s while their parents (and the African-American community) cringe. Brad’s peeps are Hadji (Kal Penn) the Middle Eastern gangster, Mocha (Nick Swardson), and the big girl who spent some time in public school (Keili Lefkovitz). Also in Malibu are Brad’s parents Bess (Bo Derek) and Bill (Ryan O’Neal), of which Bill is running for governor. Needless to say, the parents are a bit embarrassed by their hip-hop son, especially when Brad tries to help dad with the campaign by first putting on a rap style show for reporters and then making a lovely banner proclaiming dad’s support for the bitches and the hos. This springs dad’s campaign manager Tom (Blair Underwood, Rules of Engagement) into action with a fool proof plan to scare the black out of Brad and end the embarrassment. This plan calls for enlisting two actors, P.J. (Anthony Anderson, Cradle 2 the Grave) and Sean (Taye Diggs, Basic), to carjack Brad from Malibu and take him to the ghetto to show him what it is really like in the ‘hood. The problem is, Sean and P.J. aren’t from the hood, so they struggle with the assignment, and everything that could go wrong, seems to go wrong, even though they enlisted P.J.’s cousin Shondra (Regina Hall, Scary Movie 2) from the ghetto to help. Once in the ghetto though, they have run-ins with Shondra’s ex-boyfriend Tec (Damien Wayans), a heavily armed Korean convenience store family, and even a talking mouse (Snoop Dogg, Training Day). But does it turn B-Rad back into just plain Brad the white boy? Take a guess, you’re probably right.

The film concept was written from Jamie Kennedy and then adapted by himself, Nick Swardson, Adam Small, and Fax Bahr. John Whitesell directed this often-funny farce. Other actors to mention in the movie were Lucia Choi, J.P. Manoux, Keesha Sharp, Sarah Thompson, Niecy Nash, Tory Kittles, Greg Grunberg, Reynaldo Gallegos, and Josef Cannon.

Malibu’s Most Wanted comes from a long line of parodies that are completely un-PC. Stereotypes abound, the acting is sub par, and there really isn’t a story. Of course the jokes are good, and it’s always good to poke fun at white kids who think they are homies. So, not particularly good or memorable, but mostly funny. Add it all up and you get five couches out of ten.