Malibu's Most Wanted: Critic Reviews

A send-up of rap personality in which no one actually has a personality.

When it works, Malibu's Most Wanted ... scores glancingly as a mischievous social satire lampooning spoiled suburban white boys who play at being black, as well as the hyper-macho attitudes and vocabulary of actual gangsta rappers.

Think of a B-grade Bulworth with lesser talents than A-listers Warren Beatty and Halle Berry.

Wanted isn't quite the real Slim Shady of hip-hop comedies. But you might lose yourself in a few of its amusing moments.

This might be the first movie about player-haters that's not hateful itself.

Most Wanted isn't aiming for social commentary, but it isn't too difficult to enjoy its good-natured humor.

This cinematic territory has been picked clean, especially recently with Bringin' Down the House and its ilk.

Clumsy movie.

It's just the sort of slight, thrown-together mess you would expect from a movie based on a character from a TV show.

The movie has a good satirical idea and does some nice things with it, but not enough.

As with most movies that start as comic sketches -- much of the Saturday Night Live franchise, for example -- the funny ideas and characters are rarely fleshed out enough to justify 90 minutes.

[Kennedy] has a pretty good I'm-lame -but-I-believe -in-myself shtick going there. However, it doesn't last nearly as long as Malibu's Most Wanted's running time.

B-rad's rapping is so bad it's irritating. That part is intentional. The rest of the movie's irritation just comes naturally.

Purposely and often brazenly politically incorrect, it is essentially a one-joke film, but that joke happens to be about race in America, a subject that resonates long after the quick laughs are gone.

Malibu's Most Wanted is nothing to pinch your nose over, but it doesn't give Kennedy the street cred we know he's capable of.

What could have been a wily satire on contempo racial politics and culture, Malibu's Most Wanted ultimately implodes, letting down the 'hood, hip-hoppers and Jamie Kennedy fans looking forward to his first major starring role.

It's wack.

Maybe in a half-hour format, the idea would stand up. But in a feature film, B-Rad's schtick seems like a one-note song.

Silly excuse for a movie.

By the time B-Rad says 'Don't be hatin' ' for like the seventh time, a good portion of the audience will already be there.

Director John Whitesell and Kennedy and a clutch of his co-writers mine this improbable premise for more comic cultural satire than one might expect, but after an hour, or two-thirds of the film, they run out of gas.

Dumb movie, but some funny moments for teens.