Cube makes comedies for an urban audience, mixing outrageous humor with
stories about fellows of modest means looking for the pot of gold at the end
of the rainbow. Sometimes Cube writes the screenplay. In "Barbershop" he just
stars, but it's very much in the genre of Cube's homegrown efforts, "Friday"
and "Next Friday."

That Ice Cube should have found his cinematic niche making comedies is
surprising, since he usually looks like someone who just received the worst
news of his life. But the seriousness can come in handy. In "Barbershop" he
plays Calvin, who inherited a Chicago barbershop from his father. Calvin
doesn't like cutting hair. His business is about to go under, and he needs
money fast. All his get-rich-quick schemes have come to nothing.

The comedy is set against this seemingly hopeless situation. There's no way
out for Calvin, and yet he manages to make matters even worse for himself by
selling the shop to the local crime boss and then going back on the deal. So
he has creditors and a mobster (David Keith) after him, and he's the easiest
guy in the world to find — he's stuck behind a chair all day.

For those who want to take "Barbershop" seriously — and fortunately no one
in the movie takes it seriously at all — it's a picture that contrasts the
bleakness of inner-city life with the resiliency of its people. In a sense,
that's what Ice Cube's movies are always about. Here, as in the "Friday"
movies, the jokes are big and rude and vulgar and very funny.

Most of the best laughs come from inside the barbershop, which is presented
as a makeshift community center, like a bar in an old Saroyan play. There's
the upwardly mobile college student (Sean Patrick Thomas), the ex-con (Michael
Ealy), the female barber (the rap star Eve) and the white barber who talks
like a rapper (Troy Garity). Everybody gets on everybody else's nerves, but
there's the sense that this is a kind of family.

Best of all, there's the old-timer, Eddie, an old barber with no customers,
who spends all day gassing about his opinions. As Eddie, Cedric the
Entertainer is done up in intentionally ridiculous age makeup and has the
funniest monologues. His bits about the true historical significance of Rosa
Parks and the three things black people need to admit will have audiences
laughing out loud.

The picture also has a comic subplot, with lots of sight gags, involving
two imbeciles (played by Anthony Anderson and Lahmard Tate) who steal an ATM
and then find themselves lugging it all around Chicago, futilely trying to
open it and looking for a place to stash it.

As directed by Tim Story, "Barbershop" is a clumsy film, and in a couple of
stretches, it seems to stand still. The screenplay doesn't quite succeed in
its intent to present the barbershop as a glorious place where humanity
intersects and people leave enriched. But it almost succeeds, and the big
laughs go a long way toward picking up the slack.

Anyway, a sloppy but likable movie beats a meticulous but flat one every
time.
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Contains coarse language and sexual content.

E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.