SISTER ACT

REVIEWED - WHITE CHICKS: Cinema's preoccupation with engineering circumstances that place protagonists in drag continues dismally with the witless White Chicks, which ought not to be mentioned in the same breath as classics of the genre such as Some Like It Hot, I Was a Male War Bride and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

White Chicks ranks at the bottom of the drag barrel, just below the recent Connie and Carla, which was slightly more tolerable only because it was eight minutes shorter.

In White Chicks, the Wilson sisters, a couple of rude, dim, spoiled brats, are the target of a kidnapping plot on the closing weekend of the summer social season in the Hamptons. In what is arguably the most stupid decision ever attributed to the FBI in a movie, the bureau assigns two black male detectives - brothers played by brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans, directed by another brother, Keenen Ivory Wayans - to impersonate the Wilsons, who are white.

Even more implausible than the fact the Wilsons' best friends don't notice much of a physical difference - they put it down to a makeover and collagen treatment - is the notion that the brothers can run at high speed in stilettos. The kidnapping plot is all but forgotten as the movie resurrects hoary old clichés and peppers the proceedings with fart jokes, shrill screeching and US TV references that don't cross the Atlantic. This wretched effort is entirely joke-free and does not contain a single redeeming feature.