Starring: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Busy Philipps, Maitland Ward

White Chicks offers nothing more than evidence of clever writer-performers who balked at the chance to make brutal parody of certain incongruities between gender, race and high society. Apparently too manly to delve into the feminine mystique, Marlon and Shawn Wayans abandon their characters -- characters they initially go great lengths to inhabit -- whenever the story threatens to entertain or provoke. As an out, they turn to scatological humor, the plague of Black comedy; it's a chicken-hearted decision made all the more frustrating by the notion that, given free reign to target at will, White Chicks clearly misses its primary marks, Paris and Nicky Hilton.

After a crudely constructed opening, where FBI agents Marcus and Kevin Copeland (Marlon and Shawn, respectively) botch a drug bust, the pair accept an assignment to guard heiresses Brittany and Tiffany Wilson (Maitland Ward and Anne Dudek) during a weekend of charity balls and social politicking at the Hamptons. If they can expose the alleged plot to kidnap the Wilsons, Marcus and Kevin will be back in good standing with their boss (Frankie Faison) and once again put in charge of meaty cases. But when an accident temporarily mars both girls, the boys have to put on a happy whiteface and head east, where they'll encounter the Wilson's friends, societal enemies (Brittany Daniel and Jaime King, both wasted), and potential captors.

I can accept the obvious joke that the Copelands could never pass themselves off as facsimiles of the Wilsons, but I'm still amazed at the Wayanses' lazy and cowardly approach to their low-minded concept. Laughs don't come easy, save a scene where the girls toss around "the N-word" (which was abruptly chopped, undoubtedly to keep the film's PG-13 rating intact) and a dance-off, which are cliché but always funny. It's almost a relief when Terry Crewes injects some good old Black Fear into the mix as his character falls for Marcus, but he's just playing a heterosexual version of Damon, the ex-con he portrayed in Friday After Next. Don't worry of you read any gay subtext into the story, because there are fight scenes and romantic subplots (Marcus' suspicious wife, Kevin's love interest) to keep things straight. And stay half-conscious and you'll be able to telegraph the ending before Wilson pal Karen (Busy Phillips) vomits out a clue which enables Marcus and Shawn to tear through the upper crust.

The mess does little to warrant writing off White Chicks as simply a bad movie. The question remains: Why create such a scenario and then shy away from seeing it through? And why put on the make-up if you aren't going to work it? Marlon and Shawn should have handed their make-up kits over to Method Man and Redman; sure, their new television show (Method & Red) is terrible, but at least those two know you have to truly infiltrate a society before you can successfully exploit it.