Credit: Netflix

A sign that a comedy has done something special is when everyone can quote half the movie word for word. But ask them what it’s actually about, and they’ll look nonplussed. White Chicks has that written all over it.

Say the title, and most minds go straight to Terry Crews rocking A Thousand Miles while someone else is yelling, “Hold my poodle!” The actual plot? Believe it or not, there is one.

It starts with FBI brothers Kevin and Marcus Copeland, played by Shawn and Marlon Wayans, making a spectacular dog’s dinner of a drug bust. They are one cock-up away from collecting their belongings in a cardboard box when they are handed one last chance: protect billionaire sisters Brittany and Tiffany Wilson from kidnappers during a posh Hamptons weekend.

Simple enough, right? Of course it isn’t. Otherwise, we’d all be watching Law & Order. After a tiny car accident leaves the Wilson sisters throwing a diva-level strop over a couple of scratches, they refuse to show their faces in public. The entire operation is suddenly hanging by a thread, and our two geniuses come up with a plan so unbelievably daft it loops right back around to brilliant.

So they become the sisters. That means layers of prosthetics and blonde wigs with designer dresses and more than enough confidence to convince everyone around them that this plan isn’t completely barking. Honestly, the wigs are the least unbelievable part of the operation.

Once they’re undercover, the film couldn’t care less about the kidnappers half the time. Nah, the real danger is brunches. Fashion shows. Catty socialites who can smell insecurity from ten miles away.

Arresting criminals suddenly sounds easy, doesn’t it? But the slapstick is where the joke comes from, you see. It’s not just two blokes dressed up as rich women. It’s watching two hard-as-nails FBI agents discover they’ve got absolutely no chance of surviving in a world where looks are everything. And to Black dudes pretending to be two posh girls, what can be more hilarious?

And can we talk about Terry Crews? The moment he shows up, the film gets even louder. Every scene he is in is absolute bedlam, but that A Thousand Miles singalong? Ah, forget about it. That’s not even just a film scene anymore… It is basically public property. Loads of people know every lyric and couldn’t tell you what happens in the last twenty minutes.

The weirdest thing is critics didn’t like it so much, but audiences? They couldn’t have cared less. They found it on DVD, caught it at two in the morning on TV, watched it at sleepovers, quoted it to death, and turned it into a cult classic.

Now look, is every joke still a winner twenty-odd years later? Nah, of course not. But White Chicks never survived because it was classy. It survived because it committed to one absolutely bonkers idea with confidence. And somehow… against all logic… it works.

Now it’s climbing Netflix’s charts all over again, which just proves one thing: never underestimate a film that’s completely off its trolley. Sometimes the daftest idea in the room ends up sticking around the longest… and White Chicks is all the proof you need.