It’s been a year and a half since audiences first stepped inside the front door of Calvin’s Barbershop in South Side Chicago, and almost all the shop’s zany characters return for “Barbershop 2: Back in Business,” a second heaping helping of soul, sass and sitcom surprises.
Calvin (Ice Cube) still owns and runs his dad’s shop, and now he’s a full-time family man with a newborn son.
Eddie is still talking trash about everyone from Trent Lott to Tiger Woods, but this time he pauses once or twice to actually cut some hair.
Uptight Jimmy has donned a suit and a ‘stache for a gig as gopher to a shady city alderman, while Ricky secretly studies for his GED amidst a slew of girl problems (one dim-bulb date gets dismissed when she pronounces subterfuge “subter-fudge”).
Sweet-natured Dinka still harbors a silent crush on Terri, who is coping with bad relationships through an attitude readjustment and a series of female empowerment aerobics classes (most notable for a kickboxing routine executed to the shouted phrase “He ain’t sh**!”).
And Isaac the newbie has developed into a haircutting superstar of sorts, going so far as to call himself “the Eminem of the barber world.”
Screenwriter Don D. Scott doesn’t stray far from the plot formula of the first film. The shop is threatened once again by the possibility of closing. Last time the threat came from the neighborhood’s own greedy gangster-type, Lester Wallace; this time the community is menaced by Quentin Leroux, a ruthless businessman who wants to open a rival barbershop across the street from Calvin’s. Leroux is in cahoots with Jimmy’s crooked boss Alderman Brown, and the two band together to ensure that the South Side undergoes an intense wave of urban revitalization at the hands of a firm called “Quality Land Development.”
If all goes as planned, Calvin’s beloved street will soon house a trendy coffee shop, multi-screen Cineplex and Leroux’s own Nappy Cutz. Shrewdly deemed “the black man’s answer to SuperCuts,” Nappy Cutz comes complete with bikini-clad masseuses, near-silent hair clippers, vibrating barber chairs, a basketball court and an aquarium where you can choose and cook your own fish on-site. Can Calvin and Co. beat out the bullying force of big business, or will the shop close once and for all, eliminating the chances for a “Barbershop 3”?
Don’t count on that last one.
“Barbershop 2” arrives at the February box office with a degenerative disease known as Sequelitis. It goes through all the overt motions of its popular predecessor yet retains little of its warmth or driving spirit.
“Barbershop” was a success because of its appealing ensemble cast and endearing characters, and the greatest fault of “Barbershop 2” is its focus on a stale “everything-old-is-new-again” storyline instead of these winning characters.
It is by no means unfair to lament “Barbershop 2″‘s assembly as disappointingly by-the-numbers. As compelling as the film’s conflict between the ghetto residents and developers might have been, it’s depressing to watch the action coalesce in a routine finale in which Calvin bears his soul at a city planners meeting and thereby entitles himself to a happy ending straight out of Capra at his worst (sort of a “Mr. Cube Goes to Town,” I guess, or perhaps “A Pocketful of Ice Cubes” is more accurate).
The film fares better when it’s not trying to shove an important message down the throats of audience members who shilled out six bucks for a little heart and a barrel of laughs. There are big laughs in “Barbershop 2,” but there are not enough to mask the blandness of the plot contrivances and the obviousness of the comedic set-ups. Sadly, jokes from the first film, such as Terri’s hunt for the mastermind who drank her apple juice, get trotted out for one more circuit, and the new set pieces feel manufactured rather than organic. When Eddie and the owner of the beauty shop next door (a royally feisty Queen Latifah) square off for an impromptu dis-off, it brings nothing new to the table and leaves you emptily staring at the screen instead of rolling in the aisles.
The film’s saving grace is its intensely likable roster of returning actors. Ice Cube in particular commands the screen with an easy, believable charm that makes him easy to root for; even if you know from the outset that his South Side everyman will triumph in the final reel, you still crave the joy of watching it happen.
And then there’s Cedric the Entertainer, reprising his one-of-a-kind performance as Eddie, the aging loudmouth with the crazy fro who serves as the barbershop’s mouthpiece and funky Zen master. Eddie’s role has been bulked up in the sequel, allowing him more time to spout monologues about Bill Clinton’s inability to lock the Oval Office door and the D.C. sniper’s equivalence to the “Jackie Robinson of crime,” while also fleshing out his character as a (head-scratchingly enough) romantic lead. Eddie’s blustery shtick suffers from overemphasis, however, as seemingly every zinger he elicits near film’s end is framed with a reverent close-up. While director Kevin Rodney Sullivan tends to milk Cedric’s antics too abrasively, it’s probably just as well. The Entertainer is the funniest thing in “Barbershop 2” by a long mile.
In the final analysis, “Barbershop 2” is fitfully funny but also prevailingly soulless. It feels like everyone involved is cashing in on the immense good will created by the original and forgot what made the first film such a surprise hit-big laughs from great character interactions.
Very troubling indeed is the sense that “Barbershop 2” is less a stand-alone entertainment than an extended commercial for Queen Latifah’s spin-off project “Beauty Shop,” a film that will be released later this year.
Ironic that a film that so begs audiences to revert to simpler, more humble times agonizingly embodies the profit-driven attempts at franchise it claims to revile. Here’s to hoping “Barbershop 3” leaves the shop out of jeopardy, keeps the sentimentality to a minimum, and allows us more time to get to know its juicy characters.