What do you do when you have a great idea for a 30-minute movie? Pad it with 50 minutes of filler and hope no one notices.
"Malibu's Most Wanted," a spoof of Eminem and other white-boy rappers, has about 30 minutes of good material and some filler that's not bad. What gives the movie legs (or, as its Snoop Dogg slang-stealing hero would say, "What gives it lizzeggs") is that the lead character is well-meaning and surprisingly endearing.
As played by Jamie Kennedy, Brad Gluckman who prefers to be called B. Rad, despite the fact that he's all salt and no pepa is a privileged Malibu kid who wishes he'd grown up in South Central. The conceit of the movie is that his dad hires some suburban African-American actors (Taye Diggs, Anthony Anderson) to show B. Rad what it's really like on the streets, and, in the process, the gangsta wannabe, the suburbanites and some real-life gangsters learn they have more in common than they think.
The comedy in "Malibu's Most Wanted" is as broad as LL Cool J's shoulders, although not nearly as impressive. The script gets off a few inspired riffs on its class-struggle theme ("Your mama is so poor, her (breasts) are real."), but the concept is thin and you can feel the movie's language straining to stay within the limits of a PG-13 rating.
"Malibu" is at its most inspired when it makes fun of Eminem (planning to compete in a rapping contest, for instance, B. Rad announces, "This is my one shot," just as Eminem did in his Oscar-winning "Lose Yourself"). "8 Mile," with its ultra-traditional storyline, is an eminently spoofable film, and I couldn't help wondering if "Malibu" might have been more consistent if it had waited a few months, giving itself enough time to take some sharper jabs at Eminem.
Instead, Mr. Mathers emerges unscathed, and the movie gets by, just barely, on its own good nature.
MALIBU'S MOST WANTED
2 stars
Directed by: John Whitesell
Starring: Jamie Kennedy, Anthony Anderson, Taye Diggs
Rated: PG-13, but many parents will think its language, partial nudity, drug references and violence should have earned it an R.
SHOULD YOU GO? It has its moments.
