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Beauty Shop
MGM / UA Distribution Company


5.4

based on 28 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 15 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 on appeal for sexual material, language and brief drug references

Starring Queen Latifah, Alicia Silverstone, Andie MacDowell, Alfre Woodard, Mena Suvari, Kevin Bacon, and Djimon Hounsou

When Gina (Queen Latifah) gets fed up with her egotistical boss (Bacon) and buys a rundown salon, she inherits a motley group of headstrong stylists, a colorful clientele, and a sexy electrician (Hounsou). It's a rocky road to fulfilling her dreams, but you can't keep a good woman down. (MGM)

GENRE(S):	Comedy
WRITTEN BY:	Kate Lanier Norman Vance Jr. Elizabeth Hunter (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Bille Woodruff
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: August 23, 2005 Theatrical: March 30, 2005
RUNNING TIME:	105 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The script is full of brassy lines.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The beauty of the "Shop" movies is that they provide a stage for lively characters.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

lLght and likable - a low-budget "Steel Magnolias" without pretense.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The diversity of the Beauty Shop ensemble is a large part of what makes it so much fun to watch;

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

At its warmhearted center, Beauty Shop is a workshop in how to walk around like Oprah with a feeling of confidence and entitlement.

Premiere Kevin Allison

For the most part, what it aims to do-amuse and uplift-it does wonderfully.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Beauty Shop extends the popular "Barbershop" franchise to Atlanta and provides a sassy feminine counterpart to its cozy men's-club vibe.

Variety Joe Leydon

A sunny and sassy comedy that somehow manages to breathe fresh life into familiar stereotypes and stock situations.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

For all the vivid, amusing characters that surround Gina, Beauty Shop rightly belongs to Latifah, who comes into her own as a star and an actress in this film.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The plot progression can be guessed early on, but the film is more about humor and heart than a clever story.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Formulaic but extremely good-natured comedy.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A cut above what you'd expect from the spinoff of a sequel.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Has nothing new to say, but it has a lot of fun covering the same old territory.

Empire Anna Smith

This has the power to unite a female audience ready and willing to overlook its supposed weaknesses.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

As in the other two movies, the plot is a thin cardboard box used to carry an assortment of observational doughnuts--in this case, estrogen-fueled shop talk about race, men, and the politics of looking good.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's a boisterous and amiable movie but not, in the end, a very funny one.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Spends too much time being convivial and not enough time looking for the kind of real conflict that begets a good comedy.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

There's an amiability that permeates the movie and carries it through most of the rough patches and split ends.

Washington Post Jennifer Frey

Mildly amusing and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, with much of its humor playing off foolish white folks and gay stereotypes.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The story and humor are so tame the movie barely merits No More Tears.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Plays like a pilot for a TV sitcom. It sets up enough story threads for an entire season yet nothing much actually happens during the 105-minute running time.

Village Voice Akiva Gottlieb

Breezy, sporadically funny.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Beauty Shop's shtick gets old and tired pretty quickly, but a breezy tone and air of easygoing likeability carry it a long way.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Queen Latifah's warmly formidable presence drives this amiable but poky comedy.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

A spin-off of a sequel... It doesn't even try to be different, because it assumes the moviegoer wants only the same-ol' and then offers even less.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The results are so listless, dated and characterless.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

The residents of Beauty Shop never quite gel. Instead of camaraderie, the feeling is one of bare tolerance.

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

The script is painfully underbaked, and director Bille Woodruff (Honey) continues to raise a question: How can someone from a music-video background have absolutely no sense of rhythm, timing or pacing?

The average user rating for this movie is 5.4 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Sam gave it a6:
Predictable, corny, sometimes wooden, but always interesting comedy-drama.

dude k. gave it a2:
Just don't watch. It's that simple. Terrible script. It makes it so abysmal to the point were there's no point to watch. Take it at your own risk.

Lakeshia B. gave it a7:
Nice cast. Touching moments. Funny parts. But when the shop got broken into...That didn't do it for me.

Andrew gave it a0:
One word..... terrible.

Chad S. gave it a6:
Jorge (Kevin Bacon) doesn't strike me as an affirmative-action kind of guy. The real movie is in the backstory. How does an African-American woman who doesn't have Halle Berry's body, get hired by a shop with an all-white crew and clientele? Alicia Silverstone, in her best role since "Clueless", is a lot of fun as the lone white girl who has to assimilate with the "sistahs", but it's all so predictable. "Beauty Shop" just wants to be a comedy. Fine. There are actors who inject enough humanity into their stock characters to transcend Hollywood's (or Tony Danza's) mandate that people of color act a certain way (the exception being Gina's daughter who likes Bach). While not exactly funny, "Beauty Shop" is high-spirited. But when Jorge thrashes Gina's shop, to me, you're dredging up memories of Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement when white men set black churches on fire. It's a comedy killer. It's a misstep if the filmmaker's aim was to make an innocous comedy.

Susan gave it a0:
Horrible. Tries so hard to be funny. Good cast, so why so awful?

Persnickety R. gave it a9:
Every few months I have an insatiable appetite for some Soul Food that leads me to search high and low to sate my hunger. Beauty Shop (BS) came out just in time to satisfy my Soul Food hunger. Queen Latifah (I consider her the deep fried chicken that my inner black man needs to subsist) put on another ghetto-rific performance that makes every ebony person say "DAAAAAAAMMMMMMNNNN." Even Kevin Bacon (a white guy) brought some funk to the fore. It's safe to conclude that BS sated my Soul Food hunger-- mmm...mmm...good!!!!

Beauty Shop MGM / UA Distribution Company

Beauty Shop
MGM / UA Distribution Company