Barbershop

Review by Jason Gaston

I just saw a great movie with Ice Cube as the main character.

There, I just wrote down a sequence of letters that formed a string of words that became a sentence I never thought I would ever write down in my entire life, but there it is... Barbershop is a great movie. Sure, it's a little clumsy in delivery, but on the whole, I would say that it's probably one of the best comedies of the year.

The plot revolves around a long day in an urban barbershop. Ice Cube plays a character named Calvin who, low on cash and high on bills, sells the shop that's been in his family for three generations to a lone shark played by the eternally cool Keith David. After rethinking his decision, he returns to the lone shark to buy his shop back... only to discover that the price has doubled and that his shop is going to be turned into a gentlemen's club.

Meanwhile, two crooks stage a remarkably inept robbery of an ATM machine and spend all day trying to break it open. The audience, of course, learns that there is really no money in it and the duo's stupidity keeps making the situation worse and worse.

Personally, I could have gone without those two plots because the real meat and potatoes of Barbershop is in its namesake... the place where people go to shoot the breeze, talk about issues, and piss everyone off. The barbers of Barbershop. Yeah, they'll offend... but at least they'll offend equally and, of them, Cedric the Entertainer steals the show.

Manning the chairs of the barbershop is a pretty ordinary compliment of folks. There's the old blowhard, the annoying educated college kid who belches out pompous nuggets of wisdom whether people want them or not, the outspoken angry lady in a bad relationship, the reformed con who is teetering on the edge of strike three, a foreigner from Nigeria, and the white guy who acts black.

All pretty unspectacular representatives of characters you'd find in hundreds of other movies, but in Barbershop, they all seem new. They are given motivations, third dimensions, and reasons why they act the way they act.

The conversations they have are topical, honest, and about things that other movies won't touch. I'm pretty sure you've heard about the fuss over the line about Rosa Parks, OJ Simpson, and Rodney King... but they also talk about slavery reparations, black responsibility, and of course... booty.

What makes Barbershop such a great movie is that it's made for a large audience. Yeah, when going to movies that are made for a predominantly black crowd, I am the scared little white guy sitting in the corner hoping no one will notice my cracker ass... but with Barbershop, there's something for everyone. The humor is broad, the characters are identifiable, and all of it just brings the house down.

It's poignant, it's honest, and best of all... it's funny. So much to the point that I will even forgive its awkward attempt at a plot and give it some well deserved kudos for the barbershop scenes alone.