Double Take (PG-13, 2001)

Orlando Jones plays Daryl Chase, a highly successful investment banker with a supermodel girlfriend. Chase is framed for murder and has to get to Mexico, where he will be under the protection of a CIA agent who knows he is innocent. In order to disguise himself, he switches clothes with a street hustler named Freddy Tiffany (Eddie Griffin). They take a train out of town, but when the bad guys come after them, they have to figure out another way to travel.

Usually, the worst thing about a movie like this is the waste of talent. Yes, DOUBLE TAKE wastes the talent of Orlando Jones (who was terrific in The Replacements) and Eddie Griffin and especially the wonderful Vivica A. Fox. But worse than that, it wastes a wonderful idea. This could have been the movie that Bamboozled could not be, a satiric swipe at the way that black men, both upper-class and street, are seen by American society -- and each other. What humor there is comes from Chase having to "act black." After one high-jiving performance, Tiffany asks, "What's the last movie you seen, 'Car Wash?'" Chase shows that he has "kept it real" on some level by out-dancing and out-foxing Tiffany. But no effort is made to take on the real underlying issues, with the possible exception of Tiffany's comment when he is frisked by policemen: "Do I look like Puff Daddy?" and his point to Chase that "It wasn't the brother in the suit but the suit on the brother that got you your so-called respect."

The jokes are tired and so is the plot, with the least surprising twists and turns we are likely to see this year. We guess way ahead of the characters who will turn out to be a good guy and who won't. It's a terrible waste of the actors. It's even a waste of the film.