You really have to admire the Wayans Brothers.

Okay, maybe not.

But you can't ignore them, try as you might. There are three Wayans involved in the new film White Chicks -- director Keenen Ivory Wayans, the Scary Movie helmer, and his brothers Marlon and Shawn, who star in the film. And word has it there are seven more Wayans siblings just waiting around to entertain you. Sheesh.

Marlon Wayans is Marcus and Shawn Wayans is Kevin, FBI agents who have one last chance to save their jobs. They take an assignment nobody else wants -- protecting a pair of spoiled socialites from potential kidnappers -- and wind up having to impersonate the very girls they were protecting.

Got that? Two black cops become two white women.

Let the larffs begin.

The guys go to the Hamptons. As women, they hang with their girlfriends (nicely played by Busy Philipps, Jennifer Carpenter and Jessica Cauffiel), learn who their enemies are (the bitchy Vandergeld Sisters, played by Brittany Daniel and Jaime King), shop, gossip, have massive flatulence attacks, forget they are supposed to be women and chase purse-snatchers, go up against a guard dog, join a fashion show, eat funny and find the bad guys. And like that.

It's kind of endless.

There are a couple of good, gross-out laughs supplied by Terry Crews, who plays an athlete completely besotted with Marlon Wayans when Marlon is a white chick, if you follow.

There are pleasant and twisted comic contributions from Lochlyn Munro and Eddie Velez as a team of FBI sexist pigs. There's one very funny dance scene.

Mostly, the movie hops from skit to skit, with varying degrees of success.

White Chicks is actually an interesting comedy idea, but the makeup job that ostensibly transforms these actors into copies of the Hilton sisters is not great. The writing in White Chicks is likewise none too convincing, although six different writers (all three Wayans included) had a go at it. The Wayans are good at mocking the vapid, giggling socialites they must pretend to be, and those scenes have some subversive laughs.

Otherwise, the movie is stupidly plot-heavy, with too many attempts to tie a handful of visual jokes and toilet humour routines into a narrative.

White Chicks has been called racist and sexist, but it's really just childish -- one farting scene in the movie, for example, left the viewers next to us laughing until they cried.

You should know those viewers were both 10 years old.

(This film is rated PG)

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