Barbershop is the movie that got the Reverend Jesse Jackson and others hot under the dog-collar in the United States.
It contains derogatory comments about that cleric and others. But they must have taken those comments entirely out of context, because a more good-natured, hopeful, community-oriented and proudly black movie it would be hard to find.
The central location of the movie, set in Chicago’s South Side, is Calvin’s Barbershop (“estab 1958”, by Calvin’s dad). Calvin is played by rapper Ice Cube, former member of the brilliantly named group Niggers With Attitude (though the name was usually abbreviated to NWA, which some people thought stood for “No Whites Allowed”). The movie, however, is not so much about attitude and defiance as it is about survival and dignity.
Barbershop could be compared to Spike Lee’s incendiary movie Do the Right Thing as a portrait of a black community, except Barbershop lacks Lee’s self-conscious stylishness, his anger and his nastiness. The issues (except racism, which is barely touched on) are all there in Barbershop, but they are understated: crime in the community is simply satirised, for instance, with a pair of the most inept robbers you could imagine. Their antics are treated with hilarious slapstick. The single white guy in the movie (Jane Fonda’s son Troy Garity) is a likeably buffoonish wannabe-black man who, in the end, is also portrayed sympathetically.
Among the other characters working the barbershop are Jimmy (Sean Patrick Thomas), the know-it-all in favour of intellectual self-improvement; Ricky (Michael Ealy), the ex-con trying to put his gangland connections behind him; Terri (Eve), the sassy bitch of the piece; and Dinka (Leonard Earl Howze), a Caribbean man who’s somewhat out of place here, despite his blackness — a nice little nuance. And then there’s the man who steals the show, Eddie, played by Cedric the Entertainer, the comedian to be seen in Lee’s documentary The Original Kings of Comedy. It is he who disses Jackson and others. He comes across as a rebarbative eccentric, but he’s the one given the main words of wisdom to speak.
Outside of the barbershop, there is a crime lord (Keith David) trying to get his hands on the shop, a cop (Tom Wright) investigating the nearby robbery, not to mention Calvin’s pregnant wife (Jazsmin Lewis). In other words, here’s a whole community in action, cleverly and humorously brought to the screen by an ensemble cast working together as a well-oiled team.
Barbershop is almost too modest for its own good, but that modesty is a good thing if one doesn’t have expectations that are too high for the movie to bear. Its simplicity, its down-homeness, so to speak, are part of its appeal. The comic aspects draw one in and keep one chuckling; the more serious elements do not need to be hammered home. It’s not a great big bouffant extravaganza; rather, Barbershop is a neat, restrained short-back-and-sides, and it will do nicely.