What makes it different from others?

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Danny Hoch is Flip, a kid living in Iowa who believes that he is a white man trapped in a black man's body. He raps with constant yo yo yo motherf****** and the other common words used in the genre. Along with two other aspiring wiggers, the trio travel to the infamous Cabrini Green housing projects in Chicago with the intent of becoming big time drug dealers. The delusional Flip becomes entangled with some real life gangsters with interesting results. The fantasy sequences are an unnecessary distraction which interrupts the flow of the story. The acting is superb; most especially by the lead, Danny Hoch. He is Eminem with a better sense of humor. Eight Mile is a better movie, as is Gridlock'd with Tupac Shakur. Even so, White Boyz is worth the ride.

Whiteboyz is a film that was long overdue, even in '99, and informs the audience of the important lesson that white kids should stop emulating black pop culture. Unfortunately, Whiteboyz is less of a scathing social commentary and more of a lame comedy. The story revolves around "Flip", a white gangster-rapper wannabe that lives in rural America. Flip looks like Gomer Pyle except he wears baggy clothes, talks like an idiot, and is much less likable.Flip is somewhere in his mid to late 20s and still lives with his parents, and as to how he wasn't thrown out by now is a mystery to me. Flip has a lot going on in his life right. He just recently got his girlfriend pregnant and she wants an abortion while Flip sees things differently. After all--why wouldn't a jobless, aspiring-rapper with zero talent make a good father? We can hardly blame her, after all no woman should have to carry Flip's child. It's too cruel of a punishment. Flip is also surrounded by his equally white wannabes who constantly refer to each other as 'dogg' spelled with two Gs because it is so very gangster (I'm sorry, I meant gangsta) to misspell things.Flip and his posse of losers enjoy talking like idiots, getting drunk and possibly high at parties, and shooting at cornfields. They then get it into their skulls that they should take a road trip and invite the only person of African-American descent in Iowa along with them. But where should one go? California? Florida? No, Flip and his crew want to go to a harsh, poverty-stricken ghetto in Chicago to get a taste of the wonderful 'gangsta life'.After all, who doesn't dream of living in one of the worst neighborhoods in America? A place riddled with drug dealing, violence, and economic hopelessness...where can I sign up! Now the humor of the film obviously stems from the portrayal of the white wannabe rappers and I don't know what's sadder about the whole thing--that I actually sat through and listened to all of their dialogue, or that there probably really are people out there as annoying as Flip and his friends.It's at this point Flip and company leave cozy Iowa for the 'real deal' streets of Chicago. They arrive, giddy at their gloomy surroundings. Flip enlists the company of some guy to track down drug dealers, since dealing drugs is the first step on the "how to become a gangster-rapper" handbook. The man Flip enlists is quite disgruntled, who wouldn't be if these guys showed up on your doorsteps, and demands a twenty. Eventually Flip is brought to room where three angry-looking drug dealers/gangsters/loan sharks size up Flip and are irritated by his drug dealing diplomacy skills.So the three of them beat up on Flip and it is truly a sweet, sweet moment if it is only so brief. We finally get to see what Flip deserves for trying to be the next Eminem. But it's three buff guys against one Flip, as if they needed anything more than a 13-year-old kid to put Flip in traction. It is in this moment that Flip realizes that men that deal drugs and carry guns aren't the nicest of fellows and manages to get away until the police show up and start firing wildly into the air.This is ultimately the moral of the story, but it still comes off as incredibly trite and has a "TV movie of the week" feel to it. The man who helped Flip gets shot by a cop and soon dies while Flip weeps for his fallen comrade who he's known for all of ten minutes. Should've asked for overtime pay. Thus Flip and his buds flee all the way back to Iowa, where they stop the car in front of a bridge and Flip throws his gun over the side, symbolizing his giving up of his rapper dreams.Except he still dresses the same and talks in a stupid accent. A man died and he was nearly beaten to death and he still hasn't learned his lesson, and to top it all off he now has a hallucination sequence in a cornfield when he returns home. The ending of the film is left open for interpretation, with Flip doing a rap which thankfully I do not remember the lyrics. Is he the next rap super star? Or is he still jobless in Iowa? I hope it's the latter.In the end if you were expecting Whiteboyz to be the wakeup call for wannabe rappers in white neighborhoods it'll have to wait. Still, this film is worth catching on cable just to see Flip get a proper beatdown.

With this movie, Daniel Hoch certified himself as one of the most promising actors ever. Appearing in such historic films such as Prison Song, Jails, Hospitals, and Hip Hop, and who could forget Timmi Hillinigger from Bamboozled, he has shown why he is the best at what he does and what he does is act. Must see movie.

OK, only half-joking about the one line summary (alluding to the B. Boys throughout this comment), I am a huge Beastie Boys fan (and most of hip-hop in general; Run-D.M.C. are the kings). Yes, Flip (Danny Hoch), Trevor (Marc Webber), and James (Dash Mihok) are respectable emcees (no where as good as the Beasties) and have good hearts, but they live in a fantasy land. They are so caught up in their dreams of living the "good life", that they don't recognize how bad things are in reality. Flip seems to be the one who has the most trouble accepting things the way they are. His father has been laid off and his mother uses food stamps to pay for groceries, and above all, he has gotten his girlfriend Sara (Piper Perabo) pregnant. He is so caught up in the "false" glamour of the ghetto lifestyle, that he thinks he's black and practices explaining his 'hood background in front of a mirror. Really, the biggest problem is he just can't accept that he's white and living in Iowa, and that his only black friend is Khalid (Eugene Byrd), who quickly becomes disgusted with the way Flip and his friends are acting.Now, not that the "Whiteboyz" are splitting images of their New York counterparts (Mike D, Ad-Rock, and MCA), but they are going to experience the same harsh public criticisms that the Beastie Boys had gone through, and I suspect that if they hit it big (which they won't), they won't shape up their act (like the Beasties did) and become respectable rap artists. Even so, "Whiteboyz" doesn't aim to stand as a cautionary fable against whites in hip-hop, but more as a metaphor for the progressive movement of the music into non-African-American audiences. I mean, Flip lives in Iowa for crying out loud! The Beasties themselves, who before becoming involved with Def Jam, were three untalented punkers, who knew little if anything about hip-hop and eventually moved into rap and became the three great emcees they are today. Flip was the same way before, a slob I don't know, but he certainly acted differently from the way he acts in the beginning of the film. Anyways, unlike their New York counterparts, these "'boys" live in a fictionalized world where it will take an act of total stupidity to wake them up from this fantasy. Yes, by the end, the walls are all going to come crashing down."Whiteboyz" is undoubtedly one of the best films about hip-hop I have ever seen, and it shouldn't be missed by anyone. True it's geared towards a black audience (I'm African-American myself), but you can tell by the films central themes and the subject matter, it's geared more towards a white audience. Even so, don't miss it, regardless of skin color.9/10