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BarbershopRating:
Release Date: 13 January, 2004 Retail Price: $14.95 OUR Price: $11.96 You SAVE: $2.99! Cast: Complete Cast (15 total) |
Barbershop Reviews
Excellent in Several Respects
'Barbershop' is a superb film on several levels including its humor, drama, gustiness, and slick, understated style. The seemingly simple plot revolves around a barbershop that has been owned by three generations of the same family. The third owner, Calvin (played by Ice Cube), has grander plans for his life, but when presented with the opportunity to sell the barbershop, Calvin discovers that it is a far more important than he ever realized. Although, ramshackle and scarcely profitable, the barbershop represents a neighborhood institution. As the oldest employee tells Calvin, it is a place where a man could come to feel good about himself for an hour and where he could have some serious conversation. It was, in the employee's words, a black man's country club. Faced with the understanding that he possess much more than a run down business in the Southside of Chicago, Calvin must make a difficult decision. Much to the credit of the film, and to Ice Cube's performance, Calvin's decision is handled without sentimentality or melodrama.
This film garnered a lot of controversy because of the many negative statements one of the principle characters makes about hallowed, black civil rights leaders. It is important to recognize that while this character denigrates one famous black civil rights leader after another, this is NOT the film's definitive statement about those individuals. The purpose of the film, as the director and several cast members made clear is to show what life is like for the employees and patrons of the barbershop. How do they interact with each other? What do they talk about? What do they think is important? While, I've personally never been in a black owned barbershop in Chicago, the scene in which one of the characters lambastes the famed civil rights leaders struck me as immensely real. In any social situation, there will probably always be at least one person with a contrary opinion, who attacks even the sacred idols of society. We've never even certain if this character means it. We know that he is participating in an important daily event in the barbershop; he is having some serious conversation.
To my surprise, one of my favorite parts of the DVD was the extras section at the end, which, is well worth checking out. In this section, the filmmakers describe the extraordinary though and detail that went into every aspect of the film, from the floor plans and features of the barbershop, to the clothes each character wore. Director Tim Storey's narrative of the making of the film shows an extraordinary degree of intelligence and craftsmanship. While this film takes place in the black owned business in a predominantly black neighborhood, its themes are universally applicable to any social community in the world. And while the film examines complex racial issues in a bold and edgy manner, it never stoops to sentimentality or provocation. Definitely worth seeing, especially on DVD.
Call it: A Raisin In The Sun meets It's A Wonderful Life
Renting this movie last weekend was the first time I had actually seen it, and I can't believe Jesse Jackson and his followers actually took offense to the lines referring to Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement in it. Of all people you would expect to get the point, and have the poetry of the script revealed to!
The point of the entire movie can be summed up in a monologue by Cedric the Entertainer (who is about as good as it gets in this role and in this movie), where he says the barbershop--which the owner (Ice Cube's character), while caught in a moral dilemma, is preparing to sell--is more than just a place where brothers can get their hair cut. Each and every barbershop in every city and inner city in America, from Harlem to Oakland (and around the world too; I've been to several African-owned shops in Germany, Holland and Italy), is like Sam's bar on CHEERS: they are "the Black man's country club". And in that country club, a brother can get a line, a skin-fade, a shape-up, a little trim of the beard or goatee...and rediscover the royalty of his inner being while in conversation with friends and strangers about virtually anything. As a matter of fact, the beauty of the so-called controversial lines in the movie about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King (not to mention those about Rodney King and O.J. Simpson) triumphantly proclaim one of the best things about the Barbershop: where else can Black men hold such strong, divergent or even culturally iconoclastic opinions and have them be respected--or even heard?
The movie is a little short on character development. The sub-plot starts getting too ridiculous after the first fifteen minutes. And as good as Ice Cube is he is still growing as an actor, making me wish he were making this movie five years from now as opposed to almost a year ago. Just the same, the wealth of characters and acting in the movie give all the real local Barbershops across the world a three-dimensional tableau of a tribute via the fine acting talents of all involved and some truly wonderful (and wonderfully ridiculous) moments in the script. Actors in this movie (like the fine character actor as loneshark Keith David, whose voiceover voice is becoming more famous than he is) are seriously funny, while comedians like Cedric the Entertainer are sometimes borderline spellbinding in how serious they demand you take them as actors.
Anyone who isn't a Black man (and that includes the sisters) should see this movie and laugh unapologetically. Anyone who is, should first get a shape-up down the block, share what they think of the Iraq war and Halle Berry in spandex with the barber in the next chair... and then after you tip your boy right, buy this movie immediately.
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