There are worse reasons to make a movie than advocacy, but Malcom B. Lee’s Barbershop: The Next Cut feels so distractingly reverse-engineered from its talking points that the movie nearly halts to a stop whenever the movie visibly shifts from a hang-out vibe to something more narratively ambitious. The third installment (or fourth, if you count the 2005 spin-off) in a series that began near the turn of the century, The Next Cut too rarely has a razor-sharp wit, but aiming for a bigger bullseye than ever, it still hits the target more often than not. 

Set in the Southside of Chicago (but filmed in Georgia), ground zero of the highest statistics of gun violence in the United States, Calvin (Ice Cube), the wizened and pragmatic co-owner of the barbershop/beauty shop, is still snipping the hair of regulars even as just outside the door, kids are gunning each other down.

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The father of Jalen (Michael Rainey Jr.), a son who’s pushing away from his square parents and leaning into the hands of more nefarious influences, Calvin’s never been more personally engaged in the issues of the community, and wavering over whether to abandon the Southside to start over.

From the opening neon lights chords of Earth, Wind & Fire’s September and filtered imagery of 70’s Chicago americana, The Next Cut is firmly steeped in good vibes and nostalgia for Chicago’s promise as a city. It’s been more than a decade in real time since we’ve seen the gang, and everything is both different and exactly the same, but The Next Cut is explicitly set against a backdrop of impending change. Chicago has detonated, but these characters have hit their breaking point. Gunshots aren’t a punchline, they’re a weekly expectation.

It’s inevitable then that The Next Cut will draw comparisons to last year’s masterfully messy Chi-Raq – a movie that reveled in belittling tough guys for their egos and even more fragile libidos. The Next Cut is less challenging in its confrontation of street violence, framing the issues through Jalen’s increasing friendliness with a local gang leader, Yummy (Tyga), divisions between customers with opposing gang affiliations, and a half-baked plot about allowing the city block to become an enclosure.

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There’s a deep well of sadness and frustration to these plot threads, but they’re rarely delved into beyond direct evocations of the issues. At its best, The Next Cut is a vibrant, fluid open forum on questions of race, sex, and bullshit. But too often, the movie is bogged down by the needs to define the terms of all of these discussions, and draw a line in the sand in order to move the plot.

When the patter really flows, it’s nearly effortless, moving from conversations about the tangled expectations for black women’s hair to the plight of immigrants from different cultures, to endless riffs on R. Kelly. It’s caustically funny, and pays no mind to questions of political correctness or the status quo of these controversial questions.

And after building for three installments, The Next Cut’s cast list is a roll-call of some of the most  charismatic black men and women in showbiz. As Calvin, Ice Cube has long held the camera’s attention with his alternately steely and regally dorky persona, and here after cursory but memorable roles in the 21 Jump Street Series and the dire Ride Alongs, Ice Cube looks totally at home. His second-in-command, Angie (Regina King), is just as essential, communicating everything she needs with a terse single sentence takedown or playful body language.

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Other regulars are equally welcome. Eddie’s (Cedric the Entertainer) still a highlight as an overclocked coot, while Dante (Deon Cole) gleefully throws a stick of dynamite into any conversation with his unabashed perversion, and unflappable tendency to speak his mind. Of the new characters, Jerrod (New Girl’s Lamorne Morris), is probably the MVP. A socially awkward dweeb, Morris doesn’t always land the delivery, but his presence is so quirky and over-the-top that his ad-libs are guaranteed to push the dialogue into strange directions.

But the movie isn’t only these character interactions, and it just can’t find a way to meld the socially-conscious narrative intentions with the grounded comedy. The Next Cut is a love letter to Chicago, and a plea for a better city, but it’s a sermon when it should have been a conversation.

Barbershop: The Next Cut is now in wide release.

Grade: C+

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