"The Wash," written, produced, and directed by D.J. Pooh (2000's "Next Friday"), is a repugnant comedy without a single, solitary laugh. Attempting to remind people of 1976's "Car Wash," the movie is largely set around an LA-based car washing business, yet only features one scene of scantily-clad ladies doing the job. Nevermind that the employees are all males. This sort of skewed logic runs throughout the movie, which is even worse, if that's at all possible, than the "Friday" series. It's certainly just as vacuous.

When Sean (Dr. Dre) and Dee Loc (Snoop Dogg) receive an eviction notice to either pay the rent on their apartment or get out, Dee Loc hooks Sean up with a job as an assistant manager at the car wash where he works, headed by boss Mr. Washington (George Wallace). The company has recently been getting threats from a past employee, who eventually kidnaps Mr. Washington, leaving it up to Sean, Dee Loc, and the rest of the workers to save their manager.

At 94 minutes, "The Wash" is a full hour shorter than this week's other new release, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," yet feels about four hours longer. There is a very vague storyline that streams the scenes together into a mildly coherent whole, but it is at every level that the movie falls miserably on its ass. The direction is flat and confused, while the writing is inane. The brunt of fault must fall on D.J. Pooh, who has written an irresponsible, humorless screenplay, and somehow gotten it financed so that it can open on hundreds of screens at a time, while such thought-provoking, intelligent fare as "Donnie Darko" and "Mulholland Drive" can come and go without showing up in most people's neighborhoods.

Snoop Dogg turns in another performance and character identical to that of his other three 2001 pictures ("Baby Boy," "Training Day," and "Bones"). He loves to smoke weed, both as a person and an actor, and watching him do this in scene after scene is all that he has to offer. Dr. Dre ("Training Day") is only marginally better, but only because his Sean at least resembles someone from this planet.

Movies like "The Wash" put me at a loss for words. The whole thing is a depressing, stereotypical affair that can be thanked by the African American community for portraying their entire race as lazy, drug-addicted, and whorish. Pooh can't manage even one funny moment because, in order to do such a thing, one must use a slim percentage of their brain--a body part he inconspicuously seems to be lacking. Last September, I prematurely labeled "The Musketeer" as the worst film of 2001. I was disastrously mistaken.

©2001 by Dustin Putman