'Barbershop 2' restyles its own neighborhood

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

The barbershop bunch — Isaac (Troy Garity), Dinka (Leonard Earl Howze), Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer) Terri (Eve), Calvin (Ice Cube), Ricky (Michael Ealy) and Kenard (Kenan Thompson) — face some fancy competition as their old neighborhood gets gentrified. MGM Studios 'Barbershop 2: Back in Business' PG-13, for profanity, sexual innuendo 98 minutes

Playing Eddie, Cedric the Entertainer stirred up a bit of overblown controversy with flamboyant opinions about Rosa Parks and Jesse Jackson. Still, the film was a funny and surprisingly warm-hearted comedy hit in 2002. Now Ice Cube, Cedric and the rest of the cast are back for a sequel that's easily the first film's equal, if not an improvement.

In the first film, owner Calvin (Cube) discovered how much his shop meant to him — and why it was worth the struggle to keep it open. In "Barbershop 2: Back in Business," Calvin discovers the shop's value to the community.

Amid the expected clowning, the straight talk around the chairs is about the barbershop's changing neighborhood. Gentrification is getting a foothold on the south side of Chicago, bringing refurbished townhouses, Starbucks and trendy boutiques. And Calvin's immediate concern is the fancy chain barbershop opening directly across the street. Calvin has to combat a conniving, graft-taking politician and the businessman who has the city councilman in his pocket.

But Calvin finds that the best defense is a good offense — he works to improve the barbershop's image in the community. (But he doesn't see that some of those plans destroy the personality that gives the shop value.)

More important than the plot is the comic chemistry among the barbers, the customers and the neighbors. Director Kevin Rodney Sullivan and writer Don D. Scott build on the personalities introduced in the first film and expand most of them in appealing ways.

For example, Eddie, the cagey old codger played by Cedric, was little more than a likeable cameo in the first film. He virtually carries this movie. Through flashbacks, we learn how Eddie flirted with being a rebellious troublemaker in the volatile 1960s, but was rescued, in effect, by Calvin's father, the original proprietor of the barbershop.

Director Sullivan gets a bit too fancy with the flashbacks, shifting without rhyme or reason between black-and-white and color within scenes, regardless of the time frame. It's the filmmaker's only significant miscue.

Singer-actress Eve returns as barber Terri, who wields attitude as confidently as her shears; Sean Patrick Thomas again plays Jimmy, the barber with higher ambitions; and Troy Garity returns as Isaac, the shop's one white barber, now fully accepted in the group. (Garity, by the way, is the son of actress Jane Fonda and activist-politician Tom Hayden.)

Queen Latifah contributes a new character — a smart and brassy hairdresser in the neighboring beauty salon. In her two scenes, Latifah adds just enough sass and energy to excuse the fact that her appearance is virtually a plug for another "Barbershop" spin-off, the forthcoming "Beauty Shop," later this year.

Jack Garner of the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle is chief film reviewer for Gannett News Service.