SHORT REVIEW VERSION
⭐️⭐️⭐️½☆ 3.5/5
Final Judgment: The "hair crack" in this movie is a temporary fix that covers up some thinning spots, but it's highly recommeded if you want something easy and fun to watch on a friday night.
✅ Pros
- ✔ Queen Latifah’s charisma.
- ✔ It's got the vibrant energy of a real salon.
❌ Cons
- ✖ Hollywood’s neat bow. The ending solves deep issues with a magic wand.
- ✖ Cheap tropes. Some characters are just sassy sound effect machines.
👥 Recommended For
Casual family movie night.
Trigger Warnings?
Mild stereotyping.
Age Recommendation
12+📖 Plot Summary
Gina Norris (Queen Latifah), a ace stylist, ditches her sleazy boss Jorge (Kevin Bacon). She buys a rundown salon, aiming for her own empire. The place is a wreck with bad wiring, but Gina’s got grit. Her crew includes wise Ms. Josephine (Alfre Woodard), sassy Darnelle (Golden Brooks), quirky Lynn Ann (Alicia Silverstone). They keep it lively with gossip and hair drama. Gina’s charm, plus a spark with electrician Joe (Djimon Hounsou), keeps her going. The team fixes the shop, and outsmarts the rival, Jorge. Gina saves the salon, gets the guy, and everyone cheers.
DETAILED REVIEW VERSION
I was going through the Amazon Prime library, and I came across a childhood movie, "Beauty Shop!" It’s been nearly two decades since this was made, and let me tell you, rewatcing it, it's a SUPER predictable comedy. Queen Latifah's charachter Gina opend her own salon, and you can guess the rest of the plot without me writing it out.
It's like a bad bleach job, you can see the fragile strands and the cheap formula slapped on top to hold things together. Just like that, this movie has an identity crisis! Its heart wants to be a genuine story about a Black woman's hustle, but its brain is wired by a studio executive who thinks "empowerment" means a montage with a Mary J. Blige song and a hunky electrician next door.
The film almost gets it right with intersectionality. Gina struggles with her condescending white boss and the skeptical bank loan officer. These come across as not just being about sexism or racism but about the specific combo platter of being a middle class black woman. The movie points the camera at the right problems. But then it chickens out and solves them with a sitcom resolution. It’s like the writers did the research, then threw the textbook out the window to make the 90-minute runtime. You'll feel the warmth and recognition in the salon banter and that's the movie's genuine soul. But you'll also roll your eyes hard at the manufactured romance and the fairytale ending that wraps up systemic issues with a perfect bow.
And don't get me started on the stereotypes. The film makes Gina the boss, avoiding any Mammy trope head-on. But it can't resist filling the chairs with a "Sapphire" or two, whose entire personality is sassy one-liners and making fun of a coworker who is a black man. It wants to reject controlling images but keeps them around for easy laughs.
The salon itself is the best part. It functions as a homeplace or a real community center where women can be authentic. A scene where Alfre Woodard's character champions natural hair is powerful and real. But there's shelves full of products. The message gets muddled: "Love yourself... but maybe also change yourself to fit in?" Beauty Shop isn't the deep, radical treatise on Black feminism it occasionally pretends to be. But it's also not entirely the hollow commercial a seasoned critic would've dismiss it as.
It's a film with a good heart stuck in a hollywood structure. It has moments of truth that resonate, surrounded by a plot so formulaic you can predict the next line. Watch it for the fun, the culture, and Latifah! But go in knowing that for every step forward it takes in representation, it takes a half-step back into comfortable cliché.
Reviewer: Suzie Toumeh
Suzie holds two Master’s degrees: in Media Studies from Utrecht University and English Studies from the University of Szeged. She has served on two film festival juries, including the prestigious European University Film Award.💡 Want More Deep Dives on Film & Art?
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