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By BETH JONES
And, surprisingly, the fellas in this particular Chicago barbershop go easy on the locker-room talk. Instead, they spend their time trading insults and debating weighty issues like slavery reparations and the definition of true success. Calvin (Ice Cube) has run this shop for two years, cutting hair and supervising a team of engaging barbers who are dramatically different from one another. Dinka (Leonard Earl Howze) spends his days copying Pablo Neruda poems for his co-worker Terri (rapper Eve) who doesn't give him the time of day. Pompous Jimmy (Sean Patrick Thomas) puts down the others for their lack of education. He's especially hard on Ricky (Michael Ealy), a two-time offender who wants to do his job and keep out of trouble so he doesn't get put away for life. Isaac (Troy Garity), the shop's lone white guy, dreams of owning his own black barbershop. And then there's Eddie, played by the wonderfully crazy Cedric the Entertainer, who styles his hair like Don King for the role. As an elderly, veteran barber, Eddie considers it a privilege of his age to say exactly what's on his mind no matter who it offends. He enrages the others by telling them Rosa Parks didn't do anything that special and Martin Luther King Jr. was a "ho." "On Martin Luther King's birthday I want everybody to take the day off and get your freak on," he shouts. Calvin seems at home in the center of this nuttiness, but he's ready to move on to a more lucrative field. His newest get-rich-quick scheme is to start a record studio. It's not until Calvin sells the shop to a loan shark that he realizes what it will mean to him to lose the business that's been in his family for 40 years - and what it will mean to the community. "The barbershop is the place where being a black man means something," Eddie lectures. "Something as simple as a little haircut could change a person inside." The movie loses some momentum when director Tim Story diverges from Calvin and the boys to tell an implausible story about an ATM machine stolen from a neighborhood convenience store. Particularly upsetting is the way the screenwriters stereotype the store's Indian owner. It's much more fun to spend time with the well-drawn characters back at the shop. Ice Cube, with those earnest eyes of his, seems to improve as an actor with every movie. Garity is surprisingly touching as Isaac, who is constantly tormented by the other barbers for his love of black culture. But the movie belongs to Cedric, who's simultaneously out-of-control funny and awe-inspiring. Despite its occasionally sloppy structure and some weak points in the plot, these guys make "Barbershop" worth watching. Beth Jones can be reached at 777-6493 or beth.jones@roanoke.com. Barbershop HHH 1/2 A MGM Pictures release showing at Salem Valley 8 and Valley View Grande 16. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual content and mild violence. One hour, 42 minutes.
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