User Comments: Date: 4 February 2004
Summary: A large improvement over the original... A much tighter film...
Barbershop 2: Back in Business
After fending off the temptation to sell his family barbershop, Calvin (Ice
Cube) is now faced with another trial: direct competition, in the form of a
high-end chain haircut shop opening across the street. Watching the
community give in to a greedy land developer (Harry Lennix, `The Matrix
Reloaded/Revolutions'), Calvin and his employees (including Cedric the
Entertainer, Michael Eve, Troy Garity, and Keenan Thompson) try to keep the
shop alive, hoping the neighborhood will support their homegrown business
even as they decide to change their particular way of conducting business,
and lose their unique identity in the process.
2002's `Barbershop' was a mild urban comedy encrusted with lessons about
family, unity, and the valuable resource of community. Released during a
hailstorm of less than ideal cinematic representations of the
African-American community, the film was a rather large hit, considering its
modest expectations. Beating its copycats to the punch, Ice Cube (who also
produces) and company have set up shop again, a mere 16 months later, for
`Barbershop 2.' And like a monthly visit to the barbershop, this sequel is
basically the same style, just with a little more taken off the sides, and a
much tighter fade.
Coming from the school of `if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' `Barbershop 2'
picks up right where the original left off, with Calvin and his community
fending off a new threat to his neighborhood institution. Call me a
curmudgeon, but I found the first `Barbershop' to be an earnest, but
helplessly disorganized motion picture, mixing long periods of welcome
thought on the erosion of community pride with awful slapstick and 1st gear
romances. `Barbershop 2' has the benefit of hindsight, with new director
Kevin Rodney Sullivan (`How Stella Got Her Groove Back') mixing the varying
temperatures of the screenplay with more skill and an genuine effort to
sharpen the pace. He even manages to make the rather blatant plugs placed
throughout the film for the upcoming `Barbershop' spin-off, Queen Latifah's
`Beauty Shop,' seem like a natural forward movement of the story.
Under Sullivan's guidance, the comedy is actually hilarious (thanks to a
scene stealing Cedric the Entertainer, and Latifah‘s sly ribbing of his age
during a neighborhood barbeque), the messages just a little bit more
touching, and the drama runs deeper. This sequel builds on the laidback
charms the original introduced, and like a good continuation should,
develops the characters and the ideas with more finesse, since audiences are
in a more forgiving mood with sequels. `Barbershop 2' is far from perfect
though. It labors through the last act mechanics with inadequate passion,
and I could really do without ever seeing the bottomlessly unfunny Keenan
Thompson (`Saturday Night Live') onscreen again. But Sullivan tightens the
focus in his sequel, thus creating a better representation of the community
spirit that Ice Cube was going after with his original film, outside of the
entertaining shop floor trash-talking (`2' finds R. Kelly, Bill Clinton, and
Luther Vandross as the targets) and romantic subplots that previously
dominated attention.
What the two `Barbershop' films symbolize to the urban cinematic landscape
is far more important than the films themselves, but `Barbershop 2' is a
definite improvement on the core idea, and that's all I was looking for.
---- 7/10
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