BARBERSHOP CONTROVERSY - I had planned to go into some detail today about the movies I intend to see at the upcoming Chicago Film Festival. However, my delinquency in posting my review of Barbershop, the #1 movie at the box office the past two weekends, coupled with the fact that the movie has generated a bit of a controversy in the black community, compels me to finally write about it. Apparently, quite a few prominent African-Americans, including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, are angered about two different scenes, totaling two minutes of screen time, in which a grizzled old barber named Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer) calls Martin Luther King Jr. a "whore," and demeans Rosa Parks by saying that "all she did was sit her black ass down." I happened to be flipping channels last night around 6 pm and both MSNBC and CNN were doing full segments about it, which I suppose doesn't really mean much in the era of 24-hour news channels when any story can be hyped into a controversy to fill time. On MSNBC, Brian Williams was interviewing columnist Mary A. Mitchell from the Chicago Sun-Times --the movie was shot on the city's South Side -- who defended the film's right to skewer revered African-Americans like Parks and King, and a talk show host from Radio One whose name I have conveniently forgotten. The radio host's basic contention was that Parks and King were such important figures in the civil rights movement that any type of disrespect toward them is irresponsible. Furthermore, the filmmakers should consider removing the two offending minutes before the movie is released on video and DVD. Frankly, listening to his arguments made my head hurt. As others have surely pointed out, what these outraged pundits are completely overlooking is the context of Eddie's derogatory statements. From the first time he opens his mouth, Eddie is clearly the movie's fool; everything he says is questionable in its truthfulness and is subsequently dismissed by the barbershop's patrons and other employees. And what happens when he launches into his rants about Parks and King? Everybody in the joint dismisses his claims and more than one person then provides an intelligent counter-argument. That people can get this worked up over something clearly meant to be a harmless joke, delivered by a character who has absolutely no credibility, just stupefies me. The radio host explained it was his understanding that Eddie's dialogue was not even in the original script, and he believed it was added at the last minute to make a political statement. First, the fact that it wasn't in the original screenplay only confirms what I suspected at the time, which is that Cedric the Entertainer improvised the dialogue. Second, there's absolutely no way that the filmmakers were actually trying to call into question the contributions of Parks or King. Cedric's goal was simply to provoke laughs, which should have been obvious to anyone watching the movie. And he got laughs because his statements were so ridiculous that everyone in the barbershop and the audience thought he was foolish. It's not as if the lines were spoken by Ice Cube, the movie's main character, in an impassioned speech about the fallacy of black leaders. It was meant as a joke, and I hope the filmmakers are firm enough in their convictions to keep the lines in the movie. How sad is it that a movie written, directed, produced by and starring black people -- a movie that has achieved mainstream success -- is being attacked by the same people who arguably should be praising it the most? So, is the movie any good? Check back later for my review.

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