If you don’t remember, “White Chicks” was a 2004 comedy in which the Black actors Marlon and Shawn Wayans donned heavy makeup to disguise themselves as white women.
Its rating on the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes is 15 percent. Not good. Not even meh. The New York Times review of the film suggested viewers might want to prepare for it with “a full frontal lobotomy.”
Yet somehow, 20 years later, “White Chicks” is still hanging around. An essay in The New York Times this past summer suggested that time had been kind to the film, hailing it as “a culturally, racially and sexually savvy tale” whose “spiky critique of white privilege has revealed itself to be far more incisive than its lowbrow humor would indicate.”
On Sunday, the comedy somehow became a part of a National Football League game.
After an interception by the Minnesota Vikings against the Atlanta Falcons, two players, Josh Metellus and Camryn Bynum, performed a celebratory dance. Aficionados of decades-old gender and race bending comedies recognized it as the one performed by the Wayans brothers at a dance-off in “White Chicks.”
Perhaps inspired by the innovative dance, the Vikings won the game, 42-21. Bynum was proud of the celebration, posting on Instagram: “Best celly’s in the league.”
In 2017 the N.F.L., which had once been so strict that it became known to fans and the news media as the “No Fun League,” relaxed its rules by allowing more elaborate celebrations. Since then players have become increasingly creative.
Earlier this season, the same two Vikings performed a dance from the 1998 remake of “The Parent Trapslot machine online,” starring Lindsay Lohan, in which a simple handshake turns into an elaborately choreographed routine.