Ice Cube has somehow eclipsed his former career as a hardcore rapper, and developed into a big ol' teddy bear of a comic actor.
Despite its rough street language, his latest movie, "Barbershop," is almost heartwarming in its soft-focus treatment of ghetto life. Not to mention, it gets plenty of laughs, with only enough profanity for about 30 seconds of HBO's Def Comedy Jam.
Calvin Palmer (Ice Cube) runs a small barbershop on the South Side of Chicago. When he can't pay the property taxes on his 40-year-old institution, he takes an offer to buy out the store. Then he realizes how important the shop is to his neighborhood.
Palmer's hair-cutting crew is painted in broad strokes, but not to the point of stereotype. Two bring depth to otherwise one-note roles: Ricky (Michael Ealy), a felonious skunk with a heart of gold, and Terri (Eve), the lone female barber, who's about as prickly as a pit bull with poison ivy.
The barber who steals the show is Eddie, played by Cedric the Entertainer. He's an old-timer who weighs in on issues of the day and starts arguments for fun.
The plot is predictable, and some of the recurring digressions into slapstick just don't work. It's the set pieces in the barbershop that make the movie interesting. Amidst all the joking and button pushing, the barbershop is a forum for some fairly serious debates.
Ricky, for one, gets incensed about slavery reparations. He counters that, instead of money, what's needed is restraint. "That means, 'Don't go buyin' a Range Rover if you're still livin' with your mama,'" he says.
Forget that Cube frequently appears in dreck like "Higher Learning" and "Friday." If you take "Barbershop" together with his smaller roles in films such as "Three Kings," he's not a bad actor. Ten years ago, at the height of his music career, who would have guessed that?
| 'Barbershop' |
Director: Tim Story
Stars: Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer
MPAA Rating: PG-13, for language and sexual content
