The Shop Around the Corner: BARBERSHOP: THE NEXT CUT

It has been twelve years, but now the shaggy hangout vibe of the Barbershop comedies is back for a third time. It’s also the best one yet. Set in the same small independent black-owned barbershop on the south side of Chicago, Barbershop: The Next Cut gives up on being a movie and instead brings the charm as a big screen sitcom. This frees it up to be a comfortable location for staging sharply observed and warmly felt social commentary comedy, sparkling with smart sociological sentiment and compassionate character work. It’s written by veterans of TV comedy Kenya Barris (Black-ish) and Tracy Oliver (Survivor’s Remorse), who recognize the film’s strength is in making the barbershop a place we want to relax in, enjoying our fly-on-the-wall status as the various barbers, customers, and neighborhood regulars wander through. It’s a big-hearted welcoming movie with serious topics on its mind, but a light touch making it all go down easy.

The shop’s owner (Ice Cube, the series' nice center) is continuing in his father’s footsteps, making the establishment a gathering place for its employees and clients to shoot the breeze while getting their hair done. It’s a great location for a comedy, allowing a variety of characters to interact, talk out their differences, engage in funny banter, squabble and argue, fret and worry about the issues of the day, and find a way to work together. The barbershop is a stage for debates and riffs, parallel stand-up sets in progress punctuated by teasing chitchat. It now shares space – and rent – with the neighborhood beauty shop, which lends the proceedings an element of battle-of-the-sexes, but not in any reductive way. The result is merely one more outlet for a joking collision between various points of view, where the film draws its energy as an appealing clash of charismatic personalities.

The men (like old irritable Cedric the Entertainer, grayed and wrinkled by talented artists, and younger guys like Common, Lamorne Morris, and Utkarsh Ambudkar) and the women (including Regina Hall, Eve, and Nicki Minaj) have an interesting dynamic, dredging up usually unspoken resentments and deconstructing modern gender dynamics from surprising angles. The film lets them have their disagreements, finding common ground where it can and respecting their differences where it can’t. It’s fair that way, a safe space that allows them to discuss beauty standards, race relations, gang activity, gun violence, police misconduct, respectability politics, small business struggles, and more. It’s an amiable peacekeeping movie, not afraid to get serious when it needs to. The film finds a Chicago in pain, wracked with problems – homicides, poverty, broken institutions – people seem at a loss to fix. And yet there’s hope, positing that even small gestures of goodness can make a difference.

You can think of it as Chi-raq’s little cousin, and not because that’s what director Malcolm D. Lee is to Spike. Funnily enough, though it is less cinematically ambitious or angrily satirical, Barbershop: The Next Cut is a more consistent film, and no less politically engaged. It doesn’t take big swings, but it connects every time. Malcolm D. Lee is skilled with juggling tones and tracking motivations across a wide ensemble. (His Best Man Holiday, for example, is one of the better comic melodramas of late.) Here he weaves a deft dance of stereotype and insight, following not so much a story as it is loose strands of subplots woven together – romances, relationships, parenting problems, jealousies, business moves, and gang violence. He allows the characters to express a range of opinions, doubts, and conflicts, examining them in a casual, low-key, often-amusing tone well balanced with seriousness.

Though the look is sitcom bright and simple, there is heavy drama here. One dramatic subplot finds Cube’s son (Michael Rainey Jr.) drawing close to a gang leader (Tyga) who wants a new recruit. But there is also the lightest of light touches. Cut to J.B. Smoove as a smooth talking one-stop-shop with the kind of patter only he can bring, Anthony Anderson as a loud food truck entrepreneur, or Deon Cole as a daffy customer who seems to never leave, and we’re in a much sillier range. Like Black-ish, currently finishing its terrific second season on ABC, The Next Cut comes from a clear perspective, with great specificity to its humor and wearing a social consciousness on its sleeve. This animates and bolsters its attempts to present honest conversation in a way that keeps the comedy flowing without short-changing its important topics. The movie's appeal is best represented in the wheezing bluster of Cedric the Entertainer, whose elderly barber loves to mix it up with the youngsters and never seems to have a customer. (That memorably changes in a priceless scene in the end credits.) He just loves hanging out in this barbershop, and it’s easy to see why.

A King of Comedy: TOP FIVE

Sometimes a movie’s just a movie. That’s what Chris Rock has a character say in the opening seconds of Top Five. But it’s tempting to read the movie, which he wrote, directed, and gave himself the lead role in, as semi-autobiographical. The story follows a celebrity comedian who was a big hit on the standup circuit, went to Hollywood making dumb comedies, and now would rather be taken seriously, a difficult change to make mid-career. Is that reminiscent of Rock? Sure. But it’s also anyone who got a start in the public consciousness as a professional jokester and wants to grow as an artist, maybe in ways a fanbase isn’t willing to follow. Even though questions of showbiz’s gilded cage are the trappings of Top Five’s scenario, Rock’s opening statement is essentially a reassurance to the movie audience. Relax. Enjoy. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. Don’t read into it. Of course, the statement is immediately challenged back by another character in the scene, setting up the push and pull of the experience that wants its bite and lightness, too. The movie’s pleasant enough to make that work.

Rock plays Andre Allen, a man suffering through a confluence of anxiety-provoking events. After three wildly successful terrible comedies in which he played a grizzly bear police officer, his first attempt at a serious drama, a film about a Haitian slave uprising, is in the process of flopping. Reviews are terrible and audience awareness is low. His wedding to a reality show star (Gabrielle Union), micromanaged by her handler (Romany Malco), is days away. It’s enough to drive the four-years-sober comedian to eye booze with a needy look. In New York City for a whirlwind press tour before his bachelor party, a reporter for the Times (Rosario Dawson, making the most of a rare chance to shine) wants to follow him around all day for a profile. That’s certainly not bringing his stress level down. Rock’s screenplay successfully builds a feeling of overwhelmed irritation as Allen races through his day, trading one full plate for another, trying to keep them spinning.

But perhaps the real trick of the movie is how loose and casual it feels despite the character’s pressure cooker day. Allen can’t wander down the street without people shouting his name. Career demands are crashing in around him. He’s on edge, but that’s what’s so nice about having a fun person to talk to. Rock and Dawson have charming chemistry as they wander from limos and press junkets to nightclubs and dive bars. It’s a flirtatious bounce that drives the movie, a mixture of real attraction and professional interest. Sure, they’re both seeing other people, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to hang out. Anyway, the movie stacks the deck against their current relationships, making their others standard, thinly drawn romantic comedy Bad Matches.

The movie starts as a self-critical artistic struggle story a la Stardust Memories, and then slowly turns into a sugary rom-com, or rather reveals that those were its intentions all along. The result is shaggy and unhurried, often pleasant, sometimes honest, usually charming. An episodic collection of moments from a day in the life heading towards a sly rom-com conclusion, Rock’s the focus of every moment. But he’s generous enough to turn over whole scenes to the talented ensemble he’s assembled. We meet Andre Allen’s bodyguard (J.B. Smoove), his agent (Kevin Hart), a group of old friends who knew him before fame (Sherri Shepherd, Tracy Morgan, Jay Pharoah, Leslie Jones, Hassan Johnson), a gross pimp (Cedric the Entertainer), and a handful of cameos too good to spoil.

Top Five is almost sharp and thoughtful about the ways showbiz boxes entertainers into one skill set, how difficult it is to assert individuality when the public refuses to see the real you inside. But the movie decides it’d rather be warm, gooey, and pleasant. The result is a likably modest hangout movie, loose, talky, largely sweet but for a few staggeringly dirty moments. Big on personality, short on insight, the movie’s content to suggest larger topics and then goof around just outside them. And I enjoyed it while it did.

  

Lions, Tigers, and Bears: WE BOUGHT A ZOO

Cameron Crowe is the kind of writer-director who can manufacture moments so broad and sentimental, then deploy them with such total earnestness (accompanied with a tasteful mix-tape of a soundtrack) that they work wonders. Remember John Cusack holding the boombox under Ione Skye’s window in Say Anything? Tom Cruise telling Renée Zellweger that she “had him from hello” in Jerry Maguire? A group of rockers and their teenage embedded reporter having an impromptu Elton John sing-along on the tour bus in Almost Famous? These are moments of great magic that could have gone wrong in lesser hands, but when Crowe’s films sing, they really sing. There’s so much heart and humanity coursing through the films that they create comfortable places to settle into. Even when characters are running into problems, there’s a sense of a warm, gentle humanist spirit that will take care of them.

I should have remembered all of that when I went into Crowe’s first film in six years, We Got a Zoo. Instead, I had low expectations. It’s a comedy/drama based on a true story and featuring cute kids and lots of animals. I was worried the film would be too schmaltzy, too gooey sweet, too simple and formulaic. And it is, to a certain extent. But what surprised me was how caught up in it all I found myself. It’s hardly a subtle film, but it’s a comforting one all the same. It’s a movie with heavy material handled with the lightest of touches. It’s such a calm, warm, sunny film that it’s a pleasure to simply bask in it for two hours.

The film is about Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) a new widower with two kids, a young teen son (Colin Ford) and a seven-year-old daughter (Maggie Elizabeth Jones). Crowe makes a film about grief and mourning that isn’t all that concerned with the immediate aftermath of a death. Instead, this is a film that recognizes that life moves on whether you’re ready for it or not. They’re not. They’re still very much grieving, floundering under the demands of day-to-day life. Benjamin has quit his job. The son is moody and misbehaving; for this he has been expelled. The daughter, sweet as she can be, is nonetheless troubled in her own way. Hearing the sounds of a late night party next door she finds her dad and tells him “their happy is too loud.” The Mees need a change of pace.

Out house hunting, the realtor (J.B. Smoove) shows them a nice property that he warns has complications. They fall in love with the house and its vast expanse of fields. The complications? It’s a zoo shut down by state regulators. If there’s no buyer willing to fund and run the zoo, the animals will be sent away in a permanent fashion. Summoning up his courage – and his pocketbook – and against the advice of his brother (Thomas Haden Church), Mr. Mee buys the house and the zoo right along with it. His daughter is thrilled. His son is very much less so. Suddenly, they’re the owners of a lion, tigers, and a bear (and, oh my, zebras, peacocks, snakes, monkeys, and more). The workers that come with the zoo, including the young, passionate zookeeper (Scarlett Johansson), are just glad the place will open back up and the animals will remain under their care.

This is a film about rebuilding a zoo and rebuilding a family. The zoo’s employees become a kind of second family for the Mees as they try to rebuild their lives in a new place without their wife and mother. I would have liked to learn a little more about the actual process of running the zoo, which would have given more screen time to other zoo employees like Patrick Fugit and Angus Macfadyen. But that’s a minor quibble in a film that’s only interested in what owning the zoo means for the characters. It’s sprinkled with lovely little bits of acting and wonderful moments of soft cinematic delight. Its approach to mourning is a small wonder in a moment when a photo comes to life with a full memory or when a simple story can bring back the lost loved one, if only for an instant. Damon and the rather wonderful child actors sell these moments, yes, but they achieve a kind of visual power as well. Without a single proper flashback, the extent of their loss is felt.

As these characters try to move forward – Damon throws himself into the zoo and is a little startled by his hesitant feelings towards Johansson, his son develops a crush on the zoo volunteer next door (Elle Fanning), his daughter falls in love with the animals – there’s naturally some tension to be felt and life lessons to be learned. But what makes this film so satisfying is the way Crowe sets up an interesting situation in which the characters are all likable. (Well, except for the token jerk zoo inspector who exists solely to give the film some small semblance of deadline-based conflict). Little aspects of character work ring so true (I was particularly taken with Johansson’s halting, rushed pronunciation of Mr. Mee’s name, “Ben-jamin,”as she remembers his preference). I genuinely wanted to see things turn out well for each and every one of them. This is essentially a warm, broad, sweet embrace of a movie. I felt myself settling in to enjoy it as if it were cinematic comfort food.