BarberShop
The barber shop serves a special role in the black community. It is a meeting place, a place for political and sports debate, a place to gossip, a place of commerce (I’ve always said that if you stay at a barber shop long enough, everything will come to you), and at mine, a place to indulge a passion for chess. Things get said in a barber shop, among family, that can’t be said anywhere else. A place of an honest exchange of ideas, things we probably "wouldn’t say in front of white folks"; thus explaining why Cedric the Entertainer, playing the elder statesman barber, Eddie, came under a cloud of controversy for some of his lines.
"There are three things black people need to stop lying about: 1) Rodney King should have got his ass beat for driving drunk and being pulled over in a Hyundai; 2) O.J. did it; and 3) Rosa Parks ain’t do nothing but sit her black ass down." Then there was his rant about how Martin Luther King Jr. "was a ho." The barber shop is where the business of the community is conducted and its role is second in importance only to the black church. This is the lesson that Calvin Palmer (Ice Cube) has to re-learn in the movie BarberShop.
This slice-of-black-life movie follows two story lines. The main story line is a fight for Calvin Palmer to save the shop. First he is forced, due to property taxes and the threat of foreclosure, to sell the shop to a "businessman from the streets" (read: loan shark) named Lester Wallace (Keith David). Second, he must save the business from Lester, who wants to turn it into a gentlemen’s club. The secondary story line is a tale of two knuckleheads, J.D. (Anthony Anderson) and Billy (Lahmard Tate) who steal an ATM machine without thinking through how they are going to get
inside it. Most of the laugh out loud moments are provided by Cedric the Entertainer, the rest of the humor falling into the genteel, smile rather than laugh category. The movie has a lot of heart, but doesn’t let its earnestness get in the way of the movie.
One of the dominant themes in this movie is the importance of family and community. The staff of the barber shop is a family. Dinka, the West African; Terri (Eve), the female barber; Jimmy, the college boy; Isaac, the white barber; and Ricky (Michael Ealy), a two time felon in search of redemption. Calvin also comes to realize that communities don’t get better by good people moving out. Though the barber shop is the "cornerstone of the community", it’s the little things--our kind actions (the occasional free hair cut) and words (a simple "stay strong, brother" to his Pakistani neighbor after a robbery)--that allow us fully realize our humanity by investing in people.
The other theme is about finding one’s true calling. Calvin Palmer, mindful of his wife being pregnant with their first child, if full of get rich quick business ventures. The movie opens with him starting an electrical fire with his studio equipment and his wife reminds him of his T-shirt and herbal vitamins ventures. Not too different from J.D. and Billy’s ideas of getting paid today. Calvin ran the barber shop for two years, but felt that it wasn’t his calling. He spends the whole movie fighting his destiny, his father’s wishes, and his life spins out of control. He slowly comes to understand what his father stood for. His father believed that "something as simple as a little haircut could change the way a man felt on the inside." A barbershop was where a black man meant something. Calvin comes to realize that a barber is a noble profession, being in parts "counselor, fashion expert, style coach, pimp, and hustler". And above all, he must serve the community.
So, what the movie ends up telling is the story of a son fulfilling his father’s work. Sacrificing his ideas of himself by accepting his father’s will and in so doing, discovering himself, his true identity, and his mission in life.
"There are three things black people need to stop lying about: 1) Rodney King should have got his ass beat for driving drunk and being pulled over in a Hyundai; 2) O.J. did it; and 3) Rosa Parks ain’t do nothing but sit her black ass down." Then there was his rant about how Martin Luther King Jr. "was a ho." The barber shop is where the business of the community is conducted and its role is second in importance only to the black church. This is the lesson that Calvin Palmer (Ice Cube) has to re-learn in the movie BarberShop.
This slice-of-black-life movie follows two story lines. The main story line is a fight for Calvin Palmer to save the shop. First he is forced, due to property taxes and the threat of foreclosure, to sell the shop to a "businessman from the streets" (read: loan shark) named Lester Wallace (Keith David). Second, he must save the business from Lester, who wants to turn it into a gentlemen’s club. The secondary story line is a tale of two knuckleheads, J.D. (Anthony Anderson) and Billy (Lahmard Tate) who steal an ATM machine without thinking through how they are going to get
inside it. Most of the laugh out loud moments are provided by Cedric the Entertainer, the rest of the humor falling into the genteel, smile rather than laugh category. The movie has a lot of heart, but doesn’t let its earnestness get in the way of the movie.
One of the dominant themes in this movie is the importance of family and community. The staff of the barber shop is a family. Dinka, the West African; Terri (Eve), the female barber; Jimmy, the college boy; Isaac, the white barber; and Ricky (Michael Ealy), a two time felon in search of redemption. Calvin also comes to realize that communities don’t get better by good people moving out. Though the barber shop is the "cornerstone of the community", it’s the little things--our kind actions (the occasional free hair cut) and words (a simple "stay strong, brother" to his Pakistani neighbor after a robbery)--that allow us fully realize our humanity by investing in people.
The other theme is about finding one’s true calling. Calvin Palmer, mindful of his wife being pregnant with their first child, if full of get rich quick business ventures. The movie opens with him starting an electrical fire with his studio equipment and his wife reminds him of his T-shirt and herbal vitamins ventures. Not too different from J.D. and Billy’s ideas of getting paid today. Calvin ran the barber shop for two years, but felt that it wasn’t his calling. He spends the whole movie fighting his destiny, his father’s wishes, and his life spins out of control. He slowly comes to understand what his father stood for. His father believed that "something as simple as a little haircut could change the way a man felt on the inside." A barbershop was where a black man meant something. Calvin comes to realize that a barber is a noble profession, being in parts "counselor, fashion expert, style coach, pimp, and hustler". And above all, he must serve the community.
So, what the movie ends up telling is the story of a son fulfilling his father’s work. Sacrificing his ideas of himself by accepting his father’s will and in so doing, discovering himself, his true identity, and his mission in life.
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