Barbershop

A barbershop owner (Ice Cube) on Chicago’s South Side sells his shop to a local loan shark and then belatedly realizes that the shop’s eccentric mix of characters is more of a blessing than a burden. Every now and then, a movie reminds us how satisfying and entertaining a really terrible movie can be, and this one succeeds in spite of the pat and facile script by Mark Brown, Don D. Scott and Marshall Todd. Tim Story’s inept direction is a paradoxical blessing—he’s simply too unskillful to make the film glib or slick, like the TV sitcom it resembles (and probably will become). Story at least stays out of the way of the actors who know what they’re doing, like Ice Cube (who gives his character a core of harried integrity) and the wonderful Cedric the Entertainer as the shop’s opinionated, wise old pro.