At the Movies: 'Malibu's Most Wanted'

By Christy Lemire
AP Entertainment Writer

"Malibu's Most Wanted," a Warner Bros. Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for sexual humor, language and violence. Running time: 85 minutes. out of four.

It's practically a big-screen version of a Tony Robbins self-empowerment book, tucked inside a parody of "8 Mile," then smothered in the same tired racial stereotypes that have provided the flimsy premise for a string of recent comedies, including "Bringing Down the House" and "Head of State."

(And considering how much money these movies have made at the box office, it looks like we'll be inundated with more of them.)

Jamie Kennedy stars as a white, Jewish, wannabe rapper named Brad Gluckman — and he's mildly funny at first, but his character is so one-note, he and his motto ("Don't be hatin"') quickly grow tiresome.

Kennedy developed the character from a sketch he does on his WB comedy series "JKX: The Jamie Kennedy Experiment." And like The Ladies Man, Pat, Mary Katherine Gallagher and myriad other "Saturday Night Live" characters who've gotten their own movies, he'd have been better off sticking to television.

Brad — or "B-Rad," as his crew calls him, because he considers Brad his "slave name, a'ight?" — dresses and talks like he's straight outta Compton, when he really lives in a beachfront mansion in Malibu.

His behavior becomes a liability to his father, Bill Gluckman (Ryan O'Neal), who's running for governor of California. So here's how Bill's campaign manager (played by Blair Underwood, who's black) proposes to fix the problem: He'll pay two actors, Sean and PJ (Taye Diggs and Anthony Anderson, who are also black), to pose as gangstas, carjack B-Rad's hydraulic Cadillac Escalade, and drag him to the 'hood. This, in theory, will "scare the black out of him."

It's slightly funny at first when prissy PJ and Juilliard-trained Sean try to act ghetto; they fight like jealous high school girls over who gets to wear the cornrows, and need an urban dictionary to figure out that "wack" means "weak, or of poor quality." But that joke loses its luster quickly, too.

B-Rad's kidnapping unfortunately serves as the movie's forced, feel-good turning point. He runs into several people who provide him with affirmation that if he truly believes he's down, and that his rhymes are tight, then he's got to keep it real.

"You've just gotta stick with it and be yourself and don't let anybody tell you who you are," says Shondra (Regina Hall), PJ's cousin who serves as the bait in the kidnapping.

Later, a talking rat (voiced by Snoop Dogg, whose lexicon clearly influenced B-Rad's speech) comes to him in a dream and says, "You need to stop listening to all these perpetrators and just be yourself."

More warm, fuzzy tidbits come from B-Rad's dad, who confesses in a climactic epiphany: "I wasn't there for you. I can't change that. But I always loved you."

Is this the same movie that, just minutes earlier, made fun of Korean liquor store owners and Hispanic gang members?

Directed by John Whitesell (whose credits include "See Spot Run" and "Calendar Girl"), the film lists four screenwriters — including Kennedy — who seem to aim for equal opportunity in their hackneyed racial imagery.

The most offensive and ill-timed of all: B-Rad's friend Hadji (Kal Penn), who's of Arab descent, shows off his rocket-powered grenade launcher, which he says was a Christmas gift from his Uncle Ahmet.

Even a riff on "8 Mile" — the movie that made another white rapper, Eminem, socially acceptable — falls flat. B-Rad's kidnappers take him to a club, where he engages in a rap battle. "This is my one chance, my one shot. I gotta prove myself," he tells Shondra.

To quote the character known as the Token Black Guy in "Not Another Teen Movie" — which is looking better by the minute — "That is wack!"