Malibu's Most Wanted

Description

Malibu's Most Wanted stars Jamie Kennedy (Scream) as a white boy named Brad (or, as he prefers it, B-Rad) from the beach community north of L.A. who thinks he's a hip-hop star on the verge of discovery. His wannabe rap star persona is an embarrassment to his father's political campaign, so his father's handlers hire two actors (Anthony Anderson and Taye Diggs) to pretend to be ghetto gangsters, kidnap B-Rad, and "scare the black out of him." The movie's main source of comedy is that these prissy actors are no more street than B-Rad, so they're posing even more than he is. Malibu's Most Wanted isn't the Scary Movie-style lampoon you might expect; it's actually a surprisingly earnest character comedy about the cultural behaviors people use to identify themselves. This approach may get in the way of some potential laughs, but it also gives the movie some heart. --Bret Fetzer