Beauty Shop (2005)

The natural evolution of Ice Cube's "Barber Shop" films, this Queen Latifah vehicle is less hysterical and more leisurely, more traditional but simultaneously more revolutionary.  By cooning less--pandering to stereotypes comfortable to mainstream America (read that just the way you think), it is taking risks.  Showing black Americans as diverse, ambitious, literate (quoting Maya Angelou extensively), musically aware (preferring Bach or Milles Davis to Hip-Hop), sexual and aggressively pursuing their dreams, there is no way in hell this is going to make as much money as Barber Shop, at least partially because the inter-racial relationship is a white woman with a black man, rather than the other way around, and yes, I do think it is just that cut and dried.  but it is an enormously enjoyable 90 minutes at the movies, and the Queen has done a marvelous job of producing an utterly professional piece of work that should appeal to Black audiences, and women of all races.  I even teared up a couple of times.  Good fun, good film.  A solid "B"