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Covering up its roots

Beauty Shop, a spinoff of the African-American-themed Barbershop movies, boasts the charming Queen Latifah but needlessly adds white actors to broaden its appeal.

By RICK GERSHMAN
Published March 30, 2005

Hey, there's this movie coming out today with some well-known Hollywood actors. Check out the cast: Four of the top-billed stars are Kevin Bacon, Alicia Silverstone, Andie MacDowell and Mena Suvari.

Yep, that's right: It must be a new Barbershop!

Doesn't make sense? Apparently it did to the honchos at MGM:

When you're spinning off the first two Barbershop films - both set on the South Side of Chicago, featuring almost entirely African-American casts and highlighting issues in predominantly black communities - who better to fill out the principal cast than four white actors?

But the addition of so many white characters comes off as a cheesy attempt to gain crossover appeal. It's also puzzling, because both Barbershops did well with a variety of audiences.

Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer, Eve and all of your other favorites are absent from Beauty Shop, which moves Latifah's Gina Norris character to Atlanta. Gina was introduced in Barbershop 2 to set up this movie, which makes it less of a spinoff than a product of Hollywood shenanigans.

Once Gina sets up her new digs, Beauty Shop plays more like a sitcom than a film, though these jokes are pointed, sharp and nasty. The movie doesn't lack for laughs - a few bits earned deserved hysterics - but director Bille Woodruff and his writers never met a stereotype they can't exploit in painfully over-the-top fashion.

Bacon plays Jorge, a long-haired, flamboyant salon owner (talk about 180 degrees from The Woodsman). He becomes Gina's nemesis. Silverstone plays one of Gina's shampoo girls, and MacDowell and Suvari are patrons of Gina's salon who defected from Jorge's establishment when Gina opened her own place.

We certainly don't expect rigorous political correctness from our comedies, but Beauty Shop's overabundant cracks regarding characters' race, gender and sexual orientation is ultimately disappointing.

Latifah rises above the material with her seemingly effortless blend of charm, humor and strength. Though her performance has a few inconsistent moments, we're perfectly happy to blame that on Woodruff, director of 2003's perfectly awful Honey.

Still, Latifah's star turn is not enough to recommend Beauty Shop, a mishmash of styles, genres and marketing notions that ultimately feels rushed and unsatisfying. Maybe it needed a little more time under the dryer, because the highlights never came out.

GRADE: C-

DIRECTOR: Bille Woodruff

CAST: Queen Latifah, Alicia Silverstone, Andie MacDowell, Alfre Woodard, Mena Suvari, Kevin Bacon, Djimon Hounsou

SCREENPLAY: Kate Lanier, Norman Vance Jr.

RATING: PG-13; sexual material, language and brief drug references

RUNNING TIME: 105 min.

[Last modified March 30, 2005, 09:46:40]