Barbershop
Tim Story

Luke Robins-Grace

But for all its wit, an underlying feel-good factor means Barbershop ends up looking like a slightly confused collaboration between Busta Rhymes and Walt Disney. Determination to provide a better life for his pregnant wife has led Calvin (Ice Cube) through a series of ill-conceived get-rich-quick schemes. They have left him broke enough to sell the barbershop he inherited from his father to the evil local loan shark.

As a day in the life of the shop rattles on, Calvin begins to have his regrets. The hilarious banter and humility shared between colleagues and customers reminds him of how important the shop is to his co-workers, the community and his father's legacy.

If you know Desmond's, the UK sitcom based in a Peckham hair studio, you will have the idea already. Barbershop has all the same characters: the pompous student; the earnest African; the White Boy and the loud mouthed old-timer. They are all as immediately recognisable as they are loveable.

As Ice Cube explains, like all good black movies, Barbershop shows you 'a piece of the world that you would probably never see unless you were a black man'. But it goes one better than classics such as Boyz 'n the Hood and Friday by putting a cynical twist on the sanctimony associated with 'Blackness'.

In an inspired moment, Eddie (the loud mouthed old-timer), condemns the victim mentality behind slavery 'respirations' (sic) as he tears apart a young barber's phony politics.

Eddie, played by Cedric the Entertainer, also takes pot shots at civil rights icons claiming, 'OJ did it', and that Rodney King deserved to get beaten by LA cops for driving a Hyundai. He also dismisses Rosa Parkes' act of civil disobedience of not giving up her bus seat to a white passenger: 'Rosa Parkes ain't did nothin' but sit her black ass down'.

This horseplay did not pass by the black liberal elite unnoticed. Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton had a widely publicised sense of humour failure over the movie. Jackson publicly called for changes to the dialogue (perhaps provoked by Eddie's line, 'Screw Jesse Jackson'). Meanwhile Sharpton said: 'To take two victims of the civil rights movement and mock them is offensive and insulting'.

The studio thankfully took a firm stance. A company statement said: 'MGM stands behind Barbershop, its film makers and artists, and have no intention of altering it in any way'.

But while the repartee does have a humourous bite on the zeitgeist of black politics, it was spoiled by the earnest message of self improvement and community values. There is a lurking suspicion that writers Don Scott and Marshall Todd have been taking citizenship classes. So much so that, when everything ends up 'all right in the end', we see Calvin with his wife and baby, sporting thin rimmed specs and a polo shirt. Audiences won't be surprised to learn that Don Scott was part of the Disney Writing Fellowship .

This contrast of virtue and sharp-witted cynicism was ironic in itself, but the audience at the Brixton Ritzy spun it some more. They laughed when Eddie greeted the evil Mr Wallace (dressed in a pantomime style bright blue suit and tacky bling bling) with a dismissive and well-timed 'Nigger'. But when the slick ex-boyfriend of Terri (Eve) taunted The African by click-clocking his jowls to mimic an Ethiopian accent, there were PC gasps of horror.

These set-piece confrontations aside, Scott and Todd do make efforts to pick away at some of the racial barriers between the characters. Calvin pauses for thought after talking with the Indian storeowner whose shop has been ram-raided. He realises that, for all their differences, they are both hard working men trying to make a better life for their families. Then there is the White Boy who, derided for trying to make it as a barber in the 'hood', turns out to cut hair better than his black brothers. It's effective, but it would not be out of place in a class on 'Multiculturalism for Beginners'.

It's a shame that a genuine-looking black comedy turns out to be a working class take on The Cosby Show - an uplifting celebration of the African-American Community. That is not to say every film about black people must have its quota of hoes, bitches, gats and ice, but citizenship classes should come with a government health warning. It is no fun sneaking virtue through the back door.

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