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Barbershop (2002)





Plot
On a cold winter Saturday in south-side Chicago, Calvin Palmer, Jr. (Ice Cube) decides he's had enough of trying to keep open the barbershop his father handed down to him. He can't borrow enough money to keep the place open, it's not bringing in enough revenue, and he's more interested in coming up with get-rich-quick schemes to bring in easy money. Without telling his employees or the customers, Calvin sells his barbershop to a greedy loan shark named Lester Wallace (Keith David), who promptly makes plans to turn the place into a strip club.

After spending a day at work and realizing just how vital the barbershop is to the surrounding community, Calvin rethinks his decision and tries to get his shop back...only to find out Wallace wants double the $20,000 he paid Calvin to give the shop back, and before 7 P.M. Now Calvin has only a scant few hours to try and raise enough money to save the shop.

Cast and characters
Barbers
* Calvin Palmer, Jr. (Ice Cube): a young expectant father, who feels like the barbershop his father left him to manage is causing undue complications in his life.
* Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer): a 60-plus year old barber who strangely never cuts any hair. He worked under Calvin's father, and constantly compares and contrasts both Palmers and the periods they lived in.
* Jimmy James (Sean Patrick Thomas): a recent college graduate and academically-astute young man who sees his job at the barbershop as nothing more than a temporary stop on his way to a "real" job.
* Terri Jones (Eve): a young woman with a cheating boyfriend, who accuses Jimmy of drinking her apple juice. She is the only female barber in the shop.
* Isaac Rosenberg (Troy Garity): the only Caucasian in the shop, Isaac is the recipient of trans-racial humor from some of the other characters, especially his nemesis, Jimmy.
* Ricky Nash (Michael Ealy): A two-time loser who is trying to go straight by working in the barbershop.
* Dinka (Leonard Earl Howze): An overweight immigrant from Nigeria, Dinka is the butt of many jokes based on his African nationality and his large size. He has an unrequited crush on Terri.

ATM thieves

* J.D. (Anthony Anderson): A thief who steals an ATM and spends the duration of the film trying to find a way to pry it open. Ricky's cousin.
* Billy (Lahmard Tate): J.D.'s accomplice in the ATM theft.

J.D. and Billy's antics are reminiscent of those of Laurel and Hardy, and two sequences in which they have to carry the heavy ATM up a long flight of stairs recalls Laurel and Hardy's Academy Award-winning short film, The Music Box (1932).

The ATM theft was an actual case, where two people tried to rob an ATM machine by pulling it out tying one end of a chain to the machine and the other end to their truck's fender. Unlike in the movie, the real theft wasn't successful, as the fender was left behind, with the truck's rear license plate. This, in turn, led to the robbers' arrest.[citation needed]

Other characters

* Jennifer Palmer (Jazmin Lewis): Calvin's seven-months-pregnant wife, who first met Calvin in the barbershop. She reminds him a number of times about the cultural and historical significance of the shop and why he should not sell it.
* Lester Wallace (Keith David): A crafty loan shark who buys Calvin's shop for $20,000 and plans to turn it into a strip club. After selling the shop, Calvin spends the rest of the film trying to figure out a way to raise the money to buy it back, as Lester raises the price to $40,000 after he has control of the shop.
* Sam the Customer (Norm Van Lier): Former Chicago Bulls player "Stormin'" Norman Van Lier plays Sam, who enters the shop to collect donations to buy shoes for a young basketball player named Johnny Brown, who hopes to be recruited.

Running time 102 min

DL RS
No PW Needed