Barbershop

This movie is not a masterpiece of theater, and was never meant to be. It captured an inner-city neighborhood flavor that people outside of urban America will struggle to understand. Cliches dominate the picture, but they are foundational types of what is real in the city. The playboy, the pimp/gangster/loan shark/crook, and the selfish main character that learns the value of life. Uncomplicated, funny and even insulting to some, but the same people that are offended by this movie's liberties will watch Def Comedy Jam all night long. Most hard humor is at someone's expense. If I were Rosa Parks or Jesse Jackson I would not only laugh at the script, I would use it to gain a platform for community dialog. This production was not trying to deliver a moral lesson, just a few laughs. Thumbs up for a good movie!

Honestly, I'm getting sick of tired of racially-black comedies. I was told that this one was "different." It didn't have all the cliches that every other racially-black comedy did. So I watched it. Was a different? Not very much. 75% of it was still cliched. Now, if I review a movie based on that premise, I give it a 7/10. Compared to other comdies, 5/10. One good thing is, they address the problems with the cliches. Which is why I gave this movie a normally higher rating then I think it deserved. If you got nothing better to do, watch this movie. If you do, DO THAT INSTEAD by all means.

I finally got around to seeing this on DVD. I admit, I was most curious about the scenes which have angered supporters of Jesse Jackson. But the movie is about much more than that: neighborhoods, family, and friendship. Some of the highest praise that I can give is, although some of the characters are foolish, the movie never assumes that its viewers are foolish. Only a few elements are somewhat uneven. One is the slapstick portrayal of the thieves, another is the decisions made about the barbershop, and finally a bit of a plot twist near the end, that felt like a gimmick. However, that device enabled the story to have a "good" ending, and by then I felt the characters deserved it. Steven