Well, obsessive truancy officer Max Lomax (Eugene Levy) is hot on Roxy's trail, for one thing. And once the girls get mixed up with Bennie Bang (Andy Richter as the white adopted son of a Chinese crime family; he speaks with a Chinese accent), all hell breaks loose, as Bennie's prized microchip finds its way into Jane's purse, and if he doesn't get it back, the family's CD-and-DVD bootlegging operation risks losing everything! And once the girls find their way into the hotel suite of a prominent senator's son (Jared Padalecki), and his dog eats the chip, you know there's trouble! Now Bennie has Jane's precious day-planner (with all the notes for her speech!), and the chip can't be returned until the dog has a poop! Then there's the mysterious man (Darrell Hammond) onto whose crotch the girls keep inadvertently spilling hot lattes! But who'd have thought they'd see him on a train and in the taxicab they stole? AND as the chairman of the foundation for which Jane must give her speech?!?!? Meanwhile, Dr. Drew Pinsky (!) is the single father of the twins, but he's always busy with his job as an important doctor! And Jack Osborne is on hand as the manager of Roxy's band! Of course, New York Minute makes no sense; it's as wonderfully contrived as all previous Olsen Twins™ movies, but with a slightly more self-referential edge this time around (Bob Sagat has a cameo, and if you look closely, you'll catch details like a street-corner vendor selling bootleg Olsen Twins™ DVDs). It doesn't quite hit the level of pure cynicism that made SpiceWorld an enduring masterpiece, but it's a pretty fun ride. How could you hate a film wherein Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen stumble into a stereotypically "Black" store called "House of Bling," and despite having no money, they get new outfits and full urban makeovers (montage-style, of course) just because they're so cute? The leering sexuality of the film is surely creepy (Ashley has two pseudo-nude scenes within the first five minutes, and several situations find the two girls reduced to wandering around only in towels), yet this element seems like a natural extension of the very self-contained bubbleworld in which the Olsens have always existed. I can't wait for the surreal softcore movies they are bound to start making in five or six years … that franchise is going to make the Emanuelle series look like kids' play.
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