28 Days of Black Movies: ‘The Wash’ is hoodtastic entertainment at its finest

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2001 was a sweet year for Dr. Dre. (The Chronic) 2001 was still riding the music charts. His recent Up In Smoke tour had been a huge success, and he was still a highly sought-after producer, so why not add movie star to that list?

Enter The Wash, a weed-smoke-filled buddy comedy starring Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, and featuring appearances from just about everyone you know, because one thing about Black folks: We gonna put as many of our homies on as possible.

Dre and Snoop play Sean and Dee-Loc respectively, two friends and roommates who have just been served a three-day notice for eviction by their landlord. As if that isn’t stressful enough, Sean has also been laid off from his job at Foot Locker, and even if he wanted to go out and get a new job, how could he when there is a boot on his car? My man Sean was down bad, yo.

Of course, you have to have all of these problems laid out upfront for a movie like this. We need all of this drama so we can see how these two goofballs resolve it and get to their happy ending, right?
Dee-Loc, who works at a car wash, suggests that Sean go down to apply for a position there. Sean does, and he is hired on the spot as assistant manager, replacing Chris (Eminem) who was fired the day before.

Speaking of Chris, he actually gets a little nutty about getting fired and spends most of the film harassing the car wash owner, Mr. Washington (George Wallace), with some hilarious rants. Eminem is not the best actor, and I’m going to guess that this role was not far off from his real personality—at least from what we’ve seen of him anyway.

OK, so no Dee-Loc and Sean both work at the car wash, with Sean now being Dee-Loc’s boss. You can see where this is going, right? So you know, of course, Dee-Loc gets caught on camera stealing from the job, and of course, Mr. Washington tells Sean he’s going to have to handle his boy, even if it means firing him.

Sean doesn’t want to fire Dee-Loc, so he starts riding him a little bit harder to get him to act right at work, and predictably, this pisses Dee-Loc off. Now, these fools gotta see each other all day at work and when they get home at night, because it’s not like they work opposite shifts; a car wash is only open during daylight hours.

What ensues is a funny battle of wills between Sean and Dee-Loc (even funnier if the viewer is as high in the clouds as they are onscreen) and some incredible hijinks, including a kidnapping, a lot of celebrity cameos (see the above note about putting all our homies on), and the kind of irreverent comedy and shenanigans you would expect from a movie like this that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Dee-Loc and Sean do eventually have to put their differences aside in order to solve a huge problem, and all of that coming together is worth the watch.

There are several points in the film that pay homage to the 1970s film Car Wash, and that is a nice touch, too.

Overall, The Wash is a fun ride that doesn’t take a long time to get going, and you will find yourself smiling when you get to the end.

Also, the soundtrack is BOMB, so watch it for that alone.

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Monique Judge is a storyteller, content creator and writer living in Los Angeles. She is a word nerd who is a fan of the Oxford comma, spends way too much time on Twitter, and has more graphic t-shirts than you. Follow her on Twitter @thejournalista or check her out at moniquejudge.com.

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