Guide Rating -

Tagline: "Everyone's gettin' lined up!"

Calvin Palmer (Ice Cube) owns the barbershop, having inherited it from his father two years ago. Of the seven barbers who work in the shop, five are black males, one is a black female, and one is a white male. All but one of the barbers are youngish, so they call each other "dog" a lot and say "my bad" to acknowledge being at fault.

For over 40 years, guys have shot the breeze in Calvin's Barbershop about anything and everything, including sex, food, and politics. Calvin's is one of the few places in the community where groups of people feel free to speak their minds without being particularly careful about what they say. As one of the barbers says, "If we can't talk straight in a barbershop, then where can we talk straight?"

Calvin and his pregnant wife could probably get by on the income the barbershop produces, but he wants more: he wants to provide his wife and family with a home like Oprah's guest house, where—according to Calvin—Stedman has to sleep if he acts up.

But Calvin's dreams have led to his borrowing money to finance dubious business ventures that haven't panned out. With property taxes due and no hope of being able to pay them, Calvin sells his barbershop for $20,000 to a loan shark, who intends to turn it into a strip club. The loan shark tells Calvin the girls will be dressed like little barbers, and "you can come in and they'll give you a trim. And you can get some trim."

Back at Calvin's Barbershop, conversations range from the size of women's rear ends to whether or not scallops are shellfish to the quality of Tony Roma's ribs to Rosa Parks' contribution to the civil rights movement to the issue of reparations for African Americans. There's not much agreement on these topics, but what's important is that the shop provides a setting for the frank exchange of ideas.

It gradually dawns on Calvin that he's made a big mistake, and he wants the barbershop back. It turns out the loan shark is willing to accommodate him, but the price will be $40,000, payable by seven o'clock that evening. With the clock on the barbershop wall ticking, we begin to wonder if there's any way the shop can be saved.

I really liked the dialogue in "Barbershop," and for me the lively talk inside the shop is the best thing about the film. I was also pleasantly surprised at how slick the movie looks. The filmmakers cleverly intercut the somewhat static scenes in the barbershop with sequences where two petty crooks move a stolen ATM machine to various locations while trying to find a way to get it open.

I like the way the story in "Barbershop" is handled as well. When the crooks steal the ATM, they use a vehicle borrowed from one of the barbers. Thus the aftermath of the crime eventually becomes interrelated with the barbershop crisis.

The casting, acting, and mix of characters in the movie are terrific. Ice Cube gives a nice, low-keyed performance as the barbershop owner. Sean Patrick Thomas plays a know-it-all college student, rapper Eve is a feisty young woman with boyfriend trouble, Troy Garity (son of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden) portrays a young white man who has immersed himself in black culture, Michael Ealy is a two-time felon trying to clean up his act, and Leonard Howze plays a West African immigrant. But stealing the show is thirty-something Cedric the Entertainer, who plays a pontificating old barber whose hairstyle is influenced by Frederick Douglass.