By Tanya Batson-Savage,Staff Reporter
(Left to right) Leonard Earl Howze, Troy Garity, Kenan Thompson, Cedric The Entertainer, Michael Ealy and Eve as barbers Dinka, Isaac, Kenard, Eddie, Ricky and Terri respectively in 'Barbershop 2'. - Contributed
BARBERSHOP 2: Back In Business offers you nothing more than Barbershop did, though it pretends to for just a moment. Even the plotline seems to be a slightly re-heated version of the first Barbershop.
Fortunately, some meals taste just as good when they are re-heated as when they were freshly prepared and the feast of laughter that Barbershop 2: Back in Business provides is one of them.
Indeed, Barbershop 2 is probably one of the most eloquently created plotless movies. The plot is so thin sometimes it is a mere shadow. However, the humour quickly covers this shortcoming.
Those who were worried that Ice Cube had lost his touch can breathe a sigh of relief. He does not make the same mistake with Barbershop as he did with Friday. While Next Friday and Friday After Next had their funny moments, both movies had lost the freshness of Friday; Barbershop 2 remains true to its core.
All the barbers are back. Calvin (Ice Cube), Eddie (Cedric The Entertainer), Jimmy (Sean Patrick Thomas), Terri (Eve), Issac (Troy Garity), Ricky (Michael Ealy) and Dinka (Leonard Earl Howze) had endeared themselves to audiences in the first movie, and bring back heaping 'seconds'.
With the exception of Eddie, the movie is in large part an ensemble project. They work well together and maintain the same chemistry as before, with just a few changes that are very useful to show character development.
Eddie is as loud, disrespectful and barely distinguishable as ever. He continues to make the Barbershop the place where you get to hear all the jokes about what is going on in today world and the day before yesterday. They steer clear of Iraq and President Bush, though, taking all their jokes back to Bill Clinton instead.
However R. Kelly, Michael Jackson and many others get a clip from his tongue and Luther Vandross was one fade away from being made fun of, which itself did the trick. Additionally, there are also those walk-in jokes that are brought by the drama attached to some poor hapless customer.
The first time around, Barbershop declared that a barbershop is more than a place with a candy-striped pole where people get their hair cut. The movie made quite an extended effort to show that a sense of community exists in the friendly old barbershop. This time around they try to declare that a barber is more than the man (or woman) who cuts your hair.
Though the movie throws up these feel-good messages as huge white flags vigorously waved before the audience to say 'We have a point', the real reason for the movie is the 'diss' fest, eloquently led by Cedric the Entertainer.
The development of the characters and their blooming relationships help to add some needed meat to the plot line and gives you something to pay attention to while the next joke is being set up.
A little of beauty shop flavour is added to the movie, headed by the neck twirling comebacks of Queen Latifah as Gina. However, though the segments with her are funny, the addition of the hairdressers does not really tie in with the plot. Even so, when Gina gets into a showdown with Eddie it is completely worth it, even if her presence in the movie makes no more sense (other than for cross promotion of another movie).
