The Salon

1/2-a-star/****     THE SALON (PG-13)

Tim Story’s 2002 comedy Barbershop starring Ice Cube, Anthony Anderson and Cedric the Entertainer became a surprising fall hit, grossing over $75 million. A sequel soon followed in 2004, entitled Barbershop 2: Back in Business. The movie performed below the standard set by its predecessor, but still managed to take in over $64 million. A similar tale, but not a spin-off, starring Queen Latifah and Alicia Silverstone called Beauty Shop grossed over $36 million in the spring of 2005. A true female spin-off now arrives in 2007, called The Salon.

Jenny (Vivica A. Fox) is a single and successful owner of a salon in a rough part of Baltimore, Maryland. Her beauty shop still remains a popular hangout in the community, and Jenny’s sassy talking employees and her colorful collection of customers freely let their hair down and show no shame when it comes to spreading the area’s hottest gossip. These moments, along with Jenny’s young son Trey (Dabir Snell), provide her with plenty of laughs, but also a few headaches.

But Jenny’s biggest problem comes from Michael (Darrin Dewitt Henson), an attractive attorney representing the City of Baltimore, which plans on using eminent domain and a large payoff as a means of tearing down the corner salon and replacing it with a much needed parking lot. But despite the opportunity to start over in a better part of town, Jenny decides to fight for the shop and the community that has meant so much to her.

Originally released at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005, The Salon is a derivative flick that should have remained either shelved, or released directly to DVD instead of theaters. The movie is written and directed by Mark Brown, who penned the screenplay to the beforementioned Barbershop pictures, but instead of delivering the witty banter that made those two films somewhat enjoyable, Brown takes a heavy-handed approach to the dialogue, that ends up rivaling that of Tyler Perry’s films.

The movie tries to cram into its story a hodge poge of offensive stereotypes, including the abusive blue-collar boyfriend, the gay male stylist, the gold digging female and the attractive male who will only sleep with his white female clients. Outside of the shop is the dirty homeless man, two inconsiderate prostitutes and an unnatural pimp. Each of these characters is one-dimensional and is used primarily as a set-up for the movie’s lifeless jokes.

Fox (Ella Enchanted, Kill Bill Vol. 1) is merely adequate as Jenny, and ends up serving as the only straight-role and truly likeable person throughout the entire course of the movie, with her time on-screen entirely wasted by her having to play off the rest of the movie’s disastrous ensemble. Terrence Howard (Pride, Idlewild) makes a couple of appearances in the movie and steals the show, but his time on-screen is for less than five minutes total.

A movie without personality and any sort of creativity, The Salon ranks at the bottom of the Barbershop and Beauty Shop spin-offs.