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Movie Review: Beauty ShopBy Dwight BrownNNPA Columnist Hollywood never sees a good thing coming. But their hindsight is 20/20. With the success of Barbershop, and its sequel, comes a new formula: Hair salon. African-American patrons. Laugh lines. Audacious characters. Season with social issues. Pinch of romance. Count the money. Beauty Shop is a paint-by-numbers homage. Flat with a little luster. Gina (Queen Latifah), works for the phony, demeaning, Euro-trash salon owner Jorge (Kevin Bacon). Fed up with his put-downs, she quits and starts her own house of beauty, stealing some clients. Her team of hair-burners include: A wannabe poetess (Alfre Woodard). A sassy hip-hop sista (Golden Brooks). A pregnant jokester (Sherri Shepherd). A White girl studying to be Black (Alicia Silverstone). And a metrosexual (Bryce Wilson). As a new business owner and a single mom raising a precocious daughter (Paige Hurd), Gina barely has time to consider the advances of her handsome upstairs neighbor (Djimon Hounsou). The funny one-liners flow intermittently, like a half-empty bottle of blue rinse: When a patron (Mena Suvari) boasts about her $8,000 boob job, the pregnant stylist chimes in, “You could have bought a Saturn for that!” The price you pay for the cheeky dialogue is shallow character development and all-to obvious plot twists: Jorge plots Gina’s demise — and Stevie Wonder could see it coming. No risks. No shocks. No thrills. The direction (Billie Woodruf) and production quality is functional in a WB Network way. Consistent tone. Decent editing. But the sets look fake. The costumes too perfect. The wigs too obvious. The cinematography too glisteny. Beauty Shop cries out for a grittiness, a realism, and none shows up. Why see the movie? The actors. Within the confines of the material, they work small miracles. Woodard’s afro-centric/feminist character spouts exhilarating Maya Angelou poetry. Shepherd and Brooks display precision comic timing. Bacon’s droll, affected Austrian persona evokes chuckles. Hounsou evolves into a leading romantic actor. Queen Latifah’s smile still charms. And Della Reese, as a brazen patron who puts her false teeth in a water glass when her ‘do is being done, steals scenes. Barbershop broke new ground. Beauty Shop does not. Go for the hype, stay for the performances. Praise the lord and pass the perm.Rating: **Star Quality (* = Poor. ** = Fair. *** = Good. **** = Excellent)Dwight Brown covers travel and movies for the NNPA News Service.