"The Salon"

THE ADS CLAIM "The Salon" is a place where you get more than just a haircut, but, in fact, its roots are showing.
This isn't a hairdo, so much as a redo - with more than a similarity to "Barbershop," "Barbershop 2: Back in Business" and the lesser "Beauty Shop."
Still, there is great fun, occasionally, in raucous, naughty repartee when neighborhood folks gather to dish the dirt and reinforce the same stereotypes they claim to be denouncing.

Vivica A. Fox, displaying the kind of glamorous class that should get her more important roles than this, plays Jenny, the savvy owner of a beauty salon in Baltimore. She is dismayed that the city is going to demolish the building to make room for a parking lot.

She's only momentarily placated by the fact that the city's representative is a handsome hunk (Darrin Dewitt Henson) who's wearing a $1,500 Armani suit and is obviously smitten by her.
If she were more mercenary, she might take the $153,000 offered by the city and run off to Hawaii with the handsome sugar daddy. But, then, we wouldn't have a movie.

In keeping with hair-shop owners of movies past (Ice Cube and Queen Latifah) she chooses to fight for neighborhood character.
The characters in her shop, all of whom are cliches, would fight with her, if only they could stop making wisecracks long enough to get involved.
As usual, the heftiest of the stylists is also the sassiest.

She's played by Kym Whitley, who stops talking, in one scene, long enough to punch out the abusive local pimp - striking a blow for the prostitutes who sometimes stop by the shop to rest their feet.
This movie proudly sports repetitive use of the word that caused Don Imus to be fired but, supposedly, will be dismissed here as harmless fun, renewing, if you want to get serious about it, the debate about double standards in pop culture. It's best if you just laugh.

One by one, the neighborhood characters take turns at insulting each other and society in general as they debate things like why Halle Berry won the Oscar over such actresses as Angela Bassett or Cicely Tyson. The three most "fine" white men in the world are identified as Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt and Bill Clinton.
The old guy from the nearby nursing home dodges his wife to spend time at the shop, saying, "Once you say 'I do,' you don't.

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Most of the pearls of wisdom, though, are dated by the fact that this movie was made years ago. It played at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005 and has presumably been delayed to distance it from its hit cousins, the "Barbershop" franchise.
In fact, it is better than "Beauty Shop" by a line or two.

The age of the film is revealed by the fact that Terrence Howard (now a star) has a tiny, mean role as an abusive auto mechanic.
Most of the jokes, though, are either dated or distasteful, and the quick switches from witty to meaningful are abrupt. Most annoying is a stereotypical screaming gay character named D.

D. played by De'Angelo Wilson who tries to be funny, in a relentlessly derogatory way, but suddenly turns serious for one strange scene that rants against homophobia. There are similarly abrupt switches to give nods to African American history or strong women.

For the most part, though, wisecracks carry the swift-moving, tightly edited, 99-minute film. Director Mark Brown also wrote the "Barbershop" movies, so he has lots of experience at shop talk.
Just to make sure everyone is awake, he even adds a surefire howler scene - an all-out cat fight among some of the women.

• Reach Mal Vincent at (757) 446-2347 or mal.vincent@pilotonline.com.