BarberShop
(2002)
workplace comedy
directed
by : Tim Story
featuring
: Ice Cube - Anthony Anderson - Cedric The Entertainer - Eve - Troy Garity
running
time : 1 hour 42 minutes
Calvin (Ice Cube) never wanted to take over
the family business, a barbershop on the south side of Chicago. Disgusted
with the shop's crime-ridden neighborhood, and caught up in his moneymaking
schemes, one morning Calvin decides to sell the shop to the shady Lester
(Keith David). Chastised by his pregnant wife, Jennifer (Jazsmin Lewis)
for his rash decision, Calvin spends the day cutting heads at the shop,
and starts to understand the importance of the legacy his grandfather and
father have left to him. The bickering barbers include Eddie (Cedric The
Entertainer), the old-timer with his own unique perspective on black life,
Terri (rapper Eve in her film debut), a hot-tempered woman with a trifling
boyfriend, Jimmy (Sean Patrick Thomas), a college educated snob, Ricky
(Michael Ealy) a reformed criminal, Isaac (Troy Garity, the son of Jane
Fonda and Tom Hayden), a white B-Boy, whom no one is ready to let cut their
hair, and Dinka (Leonard Howze), a recent African immigrant who's too shy
to express his feelings for Terri. Calvin learns to appreciate them all,
and discovers that the place where they work is more than just a place
to get a haircut—it's a meeting place for the neighborhood, a place where
folks can speak their minds and find out what's happening. Calvin gradually
changes his mind about selling the shop, but it may be too late. Meanwhile,
a bumbling thief, J.D (Anthony Anderson) spends a painful day trying to
crack open the ATM he's stolen from the grocery store across the street.
BarberShop was directed by Tim Story and produced by George Tillman Jr.
and Robert Teitel, the producers of Soul Food. BarberShop had its world
premiere at the 2002 Urbanworld Film Festival.
BarberShop is a genial urban workplace
comedy. Director Story keeps things moving at an appropriately bouncy pace,
and the cast is energetic and appealing. BarberShop is clearly modeled
after Car Wash, and manages to capture some of that movie's low-key lightweight
charm. While the plot tangentially encompasses guns, crime, and overzealous
police, the film takes place in a sunny, bright, and essentially tension-free
inner city Chicago. In fact, BarberShop could use a touch of the working
class grit that made Car Wash so memorable. There's never any real sense
that anyone is working that hard at anything except running their mouths,
and never any sense that anything more than hurt feelings are at stake,
even when it seems that the entire crew are going to lose their livelihoods
due to shop owner Calvin's (Cube) hasty decision to sell the shop to a
lowlife criminal (played by David). A subplot about an ATM robbery offers
a silly, but efficient slapstick counterpoint to the talky comedy at the
film's core. While the film makes a noble stab at inclusiveness, featuring
sympathetic white and Indian characters, there's a mild, but still disappointing
sexism in the way it sometimes objectifies black women. But in the end,
BarberShop is a crowd pleaser, which is all that it sets out to be.