Why Is 2004's 'White Chicks' Suddenly So Popular Again in 2025?

I got a phone call from one of my daughters who was at a sleepover a couple of weeks ago. The sleepover was actually in my house — I was upstairs — but my daughters almost always use their phones to … make phone calls, because maybe Gen Alpha is reverting to using the phone again? (They still text, obvs, but it’s usually in group chats.) Anyway, my daughter asked, “Should we watch Sinister (the Ethan Hawke horror movie) or White Chicks?” And all I could think was, “Why are those the two options?”

As it turns out, many of the 13-year-olds at this sleepover were huge fans of White Chicks and had seen it multiple times. That would explain why it was the second most popular licensed film on Netflix in 2024 (behind only Bad Boys 2), and why it’s currently among the ten most-watched films on Prime Video. (Are streaming services really competing over a 2004 Wayans Bros. movie?) But … why is White Chicks, over 20 years after its release, suddenly so popular again?

For the unfamiliar, White Chicks is a Wayans Brothers comedy directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and co-written with Shawn and Marlon Wayans, who also star as FBI agents forced to pose as white heiresses to foil a kidnapping plot. It hit theaters during a wave of early-2000s comedies where male comedians dressed as women: Eddie Murphy’s Norbit, Martin Lawrence’s Big Momma’s House, Sorority Boys, and Juwanna Mann. White Chicks landed right in the middle of that trend, fortuitously just a few months after the release of Mean Girls.

It was also a time when comedies — good and lazy alike — could be massive box office hits. White Chicks earned $120 million worldwide on a $37 million budget, which feels impossible in 2025. A straight comedy (as opposed to action-comedies) hasn’t crossed the $100 million mark since the 2010s. But in 2004, there were several huge comedy hits: Meet the Fockers, 50 First Dates, Dodgeball, Starsky & Hutch, the aforementioned Mean Girls, and Along Came Polly. At the time, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, and the Wayans basically owned comedy, right before Judd Apatow changed the tone of the genre.

I think a big part of White Chicks’ resurgence has to do with the lack of original comedies available to Gen Alpha. My daughters mostly consume horror franchises and streaming YA dramas. When they do watch comedy, it’s almost always 20-year-old comfort movies: Mean Girls, She’s All That, Freaky Friday, Legally Blonde, and She’s the Man. I’d take issue, except that I mostly watched John Hughes movies when I was their age.

But why White Chicks? Honestly, I’m not sure. I rewatched it, and it’s decidedly not a good movie. The jokes are broad, the situations contrived, the plot practically allergic to logic.

And yet … I didn’t hate it. I expected to be annoyed or even offended, but I wasn’t. The movie has solid physical comedy, a few memorable one-liners, and an undeniable sense of go-for-broke absurdity. Terry Crews, weirdly, steals the whole thing as a Black man obsessed with white women. And you know what? The “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton scene made me laugh more than I’m comfortable admitting.

I would’ve rolled my eyes at the toilet scene in 2004 — fart jokes were overdone and lazy. But now? I’m sorry, this is fucking funny:

Beyond simply being a rare comedy option for a generation raised on prestige trauma, maybe the appeal lies in how uncomplicated it is. White Chicks is dumb, kind of sweet, occasionally funny, and wraps up with that ’90s/early-’00s messaging about being true to yourself and appreciating your family. For a generation born in the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis, raised through a pandemic, and politically awakened during the Trump era, there’s probably something deeply comforting in a movie that doesn’t require nuance or context. Just wigs, fart jokes, and Terry Crews singing Vanessa Carlton.

It’s not a good movie, but I think I finally get why it’s beloved. And I’m mostly surprised there hasn’t been a sequel.