At the Movies: 'The Wash'

By Christy Lemire
AP Entertainment Writer

"The Wash," a Lions Gate Films release, is rated R for pervasive language, drug use, some sexuality and violence. Running time: 94 minutes.

Movies have plots and story arcs and character development — at least we hope they do.

"The Wash" — which conspicuously wasn't screened for critics before its opening date — is more like a feature-film version of the video for Dre's 1993 hit "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang," in which Snoop plays a prominent role.

As perpetually stoned car-wash employees, the rappers and longtime friends sit around a run-down apartment, smoking blunts and drinking 40s with girls wearing tiny scraps of material that pose as clothing. Sometimes they go to work, sometimes they drive around the 'hood in their bouncing hydraulic Cadillac, which also serves as a great place to smoke pot in the middle of the day.

"The Wash" is also an updated version of the Cheech and Chong movies and an homage to 1976's "Car Wash," with a who's-who cast of rap stars. Besides Snoop and Dre, there's Ludacris, Kurupt and an uncredited Eminem as a fired car-wash employee seeking revenge. It also features cameos from Shaquille O'Neal — who we already knew could act from his starring roles in "Blue Chips" and "Kazaam" — and Pauly Shore, who we already knew couldn't act.

Written and directed by D.J. Pooh, who's best known for co-writing the 1995 cult hit "Friday," the movie stars Snoop and Dre as Los Angeles roommates Dee Loc and Sean. Sean gets fired from Foot Locker and needs money to help pay the rent, so he takes a job at the car wash where Dee Loc works.

Sean is a tad more ambitious then Dee Loc — he shows up on time and doesn't buy weed while he's on the clock, for example — so the car-wash owner, the crusty Mr. Washington (George Wallace), makes him assistant manager.

And from there the smoked-out shenanigans ensue: Dee Loc sells pot to his buddies at the car wash and has sex with his girlfriend in the grungy employee bathroom; Sean hires curvaceous, bikini-clad women to drum up business.

But because Sean is Dee Loc's boss and frequently has to scold him — and favors a plan to replace some of the slacker workers with automatic brushes — their friendship goes up in smoke.

So is "The Wash" a cautionary tale of the dangers of drug abuse? An exposition of the resentments that fester in the workplace? An indictment on the inhumanity of automation?

Nah. It's just a ghetto stereotype comedy, until it abruptly changes and tries to become a thriller when Mr. Washington is kidnapped for ransom and Eminem's character shows up at the car wash with an automatic rifle and busts off about a hundred rounds.

Snoop, Dre and their buddies take it all in stride — if they were any more laid-back, they'd be napping in their trailers.

This is a movie for fans of rap music — West Coast rap, specifically — and no one else, with a soundtrack of songs from the two main stars, as well as Bubba Sparxxx, D12 and Busta Rhymes. It makes this year's "Pootie Tang" look like the "Citizen Kane" of ghetto movies, with Chris Rock as its Orson Welles.