Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice In the Hood (1996)

Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice In the Hood's screenwriters (the Wayans brothers and Phil Beauman) must have had an easy time doing their pitch: ''Just think Airplane! meets Boyz N the Hood.'' Unfortunately, this Wayans family parody follows the formulas too strictly. Its mockery of hood-flick clichés does succeed in deflating some of the genre's more ludicrous conceits (with brother Keenen Ivory Wayans popping up every now and then to chirp helpfully, ''Message!''). But those occasional nuggets are heavily outweighed by blunt slapstick (gangstas duking it out with nuclear weapons instead of Tec-9s) — the kind of clumsy humor that might be tolerable as a TV sketch but that quickly becomes tiresome when stretched into a full-length film. They may not be a menace, but they are, sadly, a bit of a bore. C+