Copyright © 2003 by Tony Medley

B-Rad Gluckman (Jaime Kennedy) is a rich, white rapper wannabe, son of California gubernatorial candidate Bill Gluckman (Ryan O’Neal). Bill’s campaign manager, Tom Gibbons (Blair Underwood) hires two well-spoken black actors (“trained at Juilliard and The Pasadena Playhouse”) to impersonate gang-bangers, kidnap B-Rad, take him to the hood, and scare him back into whiteness.

 I always thought Ryan O’Neal was an underrated comedic actor.  But with Malibu’s Most Wanted his career has surely hit rock bottom.  This film is infuriating it’s so bad.  There is one scene, for example, where B-Rad stands on top of a car as rival gang members fire at him with automatic rifles from about 20 feet away.  Nobody gets hit!

 B-Rad’s constant rapping throughout is enough to drive one out of the theater. Trivializing kidnapping and gang violence, both major societal problems, this is unfunny, mindless, infantile idiocy.

 April 25, 2003

The End

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