Barbershop (film)
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| Barbershop | |
|---|---|
 Original theatrical poster for Barbershop. |
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| Directed by | Tim Story |
| Produced by | George Tillman, Jr. Robert Teitel |
| Written by | Mark Brown (also story) Don D. Scott Marshall Todd |
| Starring | Ice Cube Anthony Anderson Eve Sean Patrick Thomas Michael Ealy Troy Garity Leonard Earl Howze Keith David and Cedric the Entertainer |
| Distributed by | MGM |
| Release date(s) | September 13, 2002 |
| Running time | 102 min |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $12 million (est) |
| IMDb profile | |
Barbershop is a motion picture directed by Tim Story, produced by State Street Pictures, and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on September 13, 2002. Starring Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer, and Anthony Anderson, the movie revolves about social life in a south Chicago barbershop that has become a neighborhood institution. Notable for being one of the most successful movies ever to have been directed by an African American, Barbershop also proved to be a star-making vehicle for acting newcomers Eve and Michael Ealy, and provided Ice Cube with a character different from the tough thugs he was so often called upon to portray in movies.
Tagline: Everyone's gettin' lined up.
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[edit] Synopsis
On a cold winter Saturday in south-side Chicago, Calvin Palmer, Jr. (Ice Cube) decides he's had enough of trying to keep open the barbershop his father handed down to him. He can't borrow enough money to keep the place open, it's not bringing in enough revenue, and he's more interested in coming up with get-rich-quick schemes to bring in easy money. Without telling his employees or the customers, Calvin sells his barbershop to a greedy loan shark named Lester Wallace (Keith David), who promptly makes plans to turn the place into a strip club.
After spending a day at work and realizing just how vital the barbershop is to the surrounding community, Calvin rethinks his decision and tries to get his shop back...only to find out Wallace wants double the $20,000 he paid Calvin to give the shop back, and before 7 P.M. Now Calvin has only a scant few hours to try and raise enough money to save the shop.
[edit] Cast and Characters
[edit] Barbers
- Calvin Palmer, Jr. (Ice Cube): a young expectant father, who feels like the barbershop his father left him to manage is causing undue complications in his life.
- Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer): a 60-plus year old barber who strangely never cuts any hair. He worked under Calvin's father, and constantly compares and contrasts both Palmers and the periods they lived in.
- Jimmy James (Sean Patrick Thomas): a recent college graduate who sees his job at the barbershop as nothing more than a temporary stop on his way to a "real" job.
- Terri Jones (Eve): a temperamental young woman with a cheating boyfriend, who accuses Jimmy of drinking her apple juice. She is the only female barber in the shop.
- Isaac Rosenberg (Troy Garity): the only Caucasian barber (or person) in the shop, Isaac is the recipient of bigoted language and behavior from some of the other characters, especially his nemesis, Jimmy.
- Ricky Nash (Michael Ealy): A two-time loser who is trying to go straight by working in the barbershop.
- Dinka (Leonard Earl Howze): An immigrant from Nigeria, Dinka is the butt of many jokes based on his African nationality. He has an unrequited crush on Terri.
[edit] ATM thieves
- J.D. (Anthony Anderson): A would-be thief who attempts to steal an ATM and spends the duration of the film trying to find a way to pry it open.
- Billy (Lahmard Tate): J.D.'s accomplice in the ATM theft.
J.D. and Billy's antics are reminiscent of those of Laurel and Hardy, and two sequences in which they have to carry the heavy ATM up a long flight of stairs recalls Laurel and Hardy's Academy Award-winning short film, The Music Box (1932).
[edit] Other characters
- Jennifer Palmer (Jazmin Lewis): Calvin's seven-months-pregnant wife, who first met Calvin in the barbershop. She reminds him a number of times about the cultural and historical significance of the shop and why he should not sell it.
- Lester Wallace (Keith David): A crafty loan shark who buys Calvin's shop for $20,000 and plans to turn it into a strip club. After selling the shop, Calvin spends the rest of the film trying to figure out a way to raise the money to buy it back, as Lester raises the price to $40,000 after he has control of the shop.
- Ray-Ray (DeRay Davis): a hustler who constantly barges into the shop trying to sell stolen goods; everything from CDs to dogs to Pampers.
- Sam the Customer (Norm Van Lier): Former Chicago Bulls player "Stormin'" Norman Van Lier plays Sam, who enters the shop to collect donations to buy shoes for a young basketball player named Johnny Brown, who hopes to be recruited.
[edit] Production
Produced on a budget of only $12 million, Barbershop, with a story by Mark Brown and a screenplay by Brown, Marshall Todd, and Don D. Scott, was filmed in Chicago during the winter of 2002. The filmmakers used a storefront that was once a laundromat to build the set for Calvin's barbershop, and the set was duplicated on a soundstage to make filming certain scenes easier. Similar to what he achieved with his 1997 film Soul Food, producer George Tillman, Jr. wanted to portray African Americans in a more positive and three-dimensional light than many other Hollywood films had in the past.
[edit] Subjects discussed in the barbershop
Like many African American (and Hispanic) barbershops, lively conversation is more important than haircuts in Calvin's barbershop, and the characters in the movie candidly discuss many topics; some trivial, some serious.
- The significance of Rosa Parks' contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. In a sequence the filmmakers hold up as the film's centerpiece, Eddie loudly (but correctly) points out that Parks was not the only (or even the first) Black person to protest the segregated bus seating system prevalent in many metropolitan areas. Checkers Fred tells Eddie that he "better not ever let Jesse Jackson hear you talking like this," to which Eddie responds "Man, fuck Jesse Jackson!" When Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton heard about this scene, they started a boycott campaign against the film, and called upon MGM and State Street Pictures to edit the offending sequence out of the film before it reached home video and TV. The film was released on home video in January 2003, with the Parks discussion intact.
- Arizona citizens' initial refusal to recognize Martin Luther King Day as an official holiday in 1993, and Martin Luther King, Jr's infidelity. Jackson and Sharpton also wanted the King reference deleted from the movie, but, like the Rosa Parks sequence, it was not.
- Whether Black people need (or deserve) reparations.
- White people who act "Black" (Issac) and Black people who act "White" (Jimmy).
- Whether being educated makes a Black person "better" than everyone else.
- The generation gap.
- Evander Holyfield, Christianity, and Jesus' religion.
- A woman's ideal figure, using Jennifer Lopez and Mother Love as contrasting examples.
- Whether a scallop is a shellfish.
[edit] Sequels and spin-offs
In 2004, MGM released the sequel Barbershop 2: Back in Business. All of the original cast returned, but Tim Story did not; this movie was directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan. The same year, Billie Woodruff directed a spin-off film entitled Beauty Shop, with Queen Latifah as the lead (Latifah's character made her debut in Barbershop 2). Beauty Shop, pushed back from a late summer 2004 release, finally reached theatres in February 2005.
During the fall of 2005, State Street and Ice Cube debuted Barbershop: The Series on the Showtime cable network, with Omar Gooding taking over Ice Cube's role of Calvin.
[edit] Trivia
- Both Ice Cube and Eve are successful hip hop recording artists.
- Ironically, Ice Cube's character Calvin did not allow rap music to be played in the barbershop during the morning hours.
- Troy Garity is the son of actress Jane Fonda and activist/politician Tom Hayden. "Garity" is his paternal grandmother's maiden name, which he uses to distinguish himself from his extremely well-known parents.
- "Dinka" is not a typical Nigerian name. Thus, the character is renamed "Yinka" on Barbershop: The Series.
- On Barbershop: The Series, the character Ricky has been replaced by a more hardened ex-con, Romadal.
- On Barbershop: The Series, Isaac's last name is changed from "Rosenberg" to "Brice".
- The Ice Cube song "You Can Do It" is featured prominently in a memorable scene from the 2001 film Save the Last Dance, which stars Sean Patrick Thomas.
- Eve (Terri) and Jason George (Terri's cheating boyfriend Kevin) portrayed an on-again, off-again couple on the TV sitcom Eve.
- Cedric the Entertainer and Anthony Anderson both appeared in the 2001 film Kingdom Come.
- Keith David appeared in the 1995 film Dead Presidents, which starred Lahmard Tate's brother Larenz Tate.
- The success of the Barbershop franchise likely prompted Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to release the 1970s sitcom That's My Mama on DVD. The series featured Clifton Davis as the proprietor of a barbershop he inherited from his father. Future Love Boat cast member Ted Lange had a supporting role.
- In 2005, Al Sharpton -- who organized a failed boycott of the film -- began hosting a talk show on the TV One cable network entitled Sharp Talk with Al Sharpton. Ironically, each episode is filmed in a barbershop.
