Beauty Shop
by Bille Woodruff
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Actor: Alicia Silverstone, Andie MacDowell, Djimon Hounsou, Jonathan 'Lil J' McDaniel, Queen LatifahDirector: Bille Woodruff
Brand: QUEEN LATIFAH
Producer: David Hoberman
Producer: George Tillman Jr.
Producer: Ice Cube
Producer: Louise Rosner
Writer: Elizabeth Hunter
Writer: Kate Lanier
Writer: Norman Vance Jr.
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-23
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corporation (MGM)
DVD Reviews of Beauty Shop
DVD Review: Beauty Shop is not as funny as it could have been.
Summary: 3 Stars
I'll be the first to admit that I'm a big fan of Queen Latifa. She's just so versatile and so immensely talented; she can sing, dance and act, and she has a sassiness that is a beguiling mixture of the adorable and the sexy - she can shake her booty with the best of them. Which is why I expected better from her than what she gives us in Beauty Shop.
Yes - the film is minimally entertaining, but it's also a rather flat, standard, and pedestrian affair, where the jokes aren't nearly as funny as they should be and where the producers are just content to let the proceedings meander along without much of a plot. There are a few humorous moments, along with occasional randy, and outrageous one-liners, but generally the movie lacks impact and a lot of the humor just doesn't quite work.
There's no doubt that Beauty Shop is earnest and sweet natured, but it's also a rather ramshackle affair, thrown together from leftover materials and, in the last reel, so rushed to completion that it threatens to collapse from the effort to cobble everything together at the last minute. It doesn't help that the movie is stuck with a PG rating.
Black women of this nature can be so inherently funny, bawdy, and outrageous that perhaps an R rating would have helped give the film the naughtiness that it so desperately seems to desire. It's as though there's a much better and far more shocking film buried somewhere beneath the blow driers and the bottles of conditioner just waiting to burst out and surprise us.
Queen Latifah stars as Gina -a talented hair stylist who has moved from Chicago to Atlanta so her child, Vanessa (Paige Hurd), can attend a prestigious music school. She moves in with her mother-in-law (Della Reese) and headstrong sister-in-law Darnelle (Keisha Knight Pulliam) in what looks like a nice suburban house in a good neighborhood - hey, she can park her SUV on the street overnight and not even lock it!
Unfortunately, she's not happy working at a pompous beauty shop run by her unappreciative, euro trash, and streaky haired boss, Jorge Christophe (Kevin Bacon, having a lot of fun). It's an upscale, fancy place with some nice customers, and the money is pretty good, but Gina can't stand Jorge. He treats her like trash and ends up taking the credit for all her hard work.
Finally, she quits, and with the help of a back loan, goes off to start her own shop helped by the enthusiastic and sweet-natured stylist Lynn (Alicia Silverstone). The hook is whether Gina will succeed with the colourful assortment of staff that she assembles. There's the eccentric Josephine (Alfre Woodard), outspoken Chanel (Golden Brooks), sassy Ida (Sherri Shepard), as well as a hunky ex-con named James (Byron Wilson).
It's not long before Gina's having problems with her electricity, but Joe (Djimon Hounsou), comes to the rescue. He's a sexy and hunky electrician who just happens to be living upstairs; he's also a talented musician who encourages Vanessa and also serves as a romantic interest for Gina.
Much to Jorge's chagrin, Gina begins to attract some regular customers from her old job, most notably Terri (Andie MacDowell), a jittery, neurotic society wife with marital issues, and Joanne (Mena Suvari), a pretentious blonde who has just had some new breast implants.
Most of the drama comes from the typical struggles Gina faces as she renovates the shop. She has difficulties with employees and also has cash problems as she tries to make ends meet. All of this is fine, and might be enough material for several stand-alone comedy sketches, but it all amounts to a series of scenes instead of a cohesive story with a clear plot, climax and resolution. It also doesn't take much intelligence to figure out who is trying to sabotage her shop and why.
There are a lot of lines such as "you go girl" complete with the obligatory "sister" and "booty" references, some of which work and some of which don't. Golden Brooks as Chanel and Sherri Shepherd as Ida have most of the funny one-liners and they certainly bring some wackiness and attitude to the shop, but a lot of the humor falls flat, particularly Woodard's character who is reduced to randomly and intermittently reciting poetry.
Beauty Shop is one of those films that have a cast of thousands with each character seemingly jostling for attention and screen time. Some hog the limelight more than others, with the uninhibited Silverstone, Woodard, Underwood, and Shephard, for example, getting the lions share of the attention, but in the end, it all looks as though Queen Latifa has phoned the film in, merely inviting a bunch of her friends over for lunch and a good gossip. Mike Leonard August 05.
Description of Beauty Shop
Queen Latifah heads an "excellent ensemble" cast in this "warm, funny, empowering" (New York Post) comedy from the producers of Barbershop and the producer of Bringing Down the House! Co-starring Alicia Silverstone, Andie MacDowell, Alfre Woodard, Mena Suvari and Djimon Hounsou - and featuring Kevin Bacon in a hilarious performance - Beauty Shop "will slap a smile on your face and keep it there" (Premiere)! When Jorge (Bacon), the egotistical boss at a posh salon, pushes his star stylist, Gina(Latifah), a hair too far, Gina leaves and opens a beauty shop of her own. Inheriting an opinionated group of stylists, a colorful clientele and a sexy upstairs neighbor, Gina proves that you can't keep a good woman down - and you can't keep a shopful of outrageous women from speaking their minds!With Queen Latifah holding court over a cast of sassy females, Beauty Shop continues the Barbershop franchise in entertaining style. Reprising her role from Barbershop 2: Back in Business, Latifah plays Gina the big-booty stylist, now on her own (she's a widow) and moving from Chicago to Atlanta, where she gets sick of her flamboyantly bitchy boss (played by... Kevin Bacon?), inherits her two best clients (Andie MacDowell and Mena Suvari) and her popular formula for "hair crack" conditioner, and opens her own styling shop with a $30,000 loan and a rainbow coalition of hairdressers played by Golden Brooks, Sherri Shepherd, Alfre Woodard and Alicia Silverstone. While it lacks the frank, sharply observant racial humor of Barbershop, this easygoing comedy moves along at an agreeable pace, with a supporting cast of beauty-shop customers (and a love interest, played by Djimon Hounsou) who play off Queen Latifah's effortless appeal with energy to spare. Sure it's conventional, and most of the characters are thinly developed, but Beauty Shop is a fun place to visit for 105 hassle-free minutes. --Jeff Shannon
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