2004
'Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow'
A low-budget comedy set in the world of hairdressing, Hair Show was originally titled, Beauty Shop -, but the title was changed to avoid a legal clash with Billie Woodruff's 2005's Beauty Shop, distributed by MGM that was released the year after Hair Show came out and was Leslie Small's directorial debut and opened to only eight U.S cities on October 15, 2004. UrbanWorks Entertainment, which alleged to have had the bragging rights to the title Beauty Shop, renamed the film Hair Show, at the cost of $3.5 million. Interestingly, former NBA star, Magic Johnson acted as the executive director of the film.
Small went on to direct such movies as Undercover Brother 2, Holiday Rush, as well as numerous stand-up comedies from the likes of Steve Harvey, Eddie Griffin and Kevin Hart.
Two estranged sisters who haven't spoken to each other since their grandmother died, are also hairdressers reuniting in L.A. Grandma left $75k to Angela, whilst Peaches had to make do with a bible.; a sassy stylist, Peaches travels to Hollywood when the IRS shows up and asks her to pay $50k in back taxes. Alas, in an effort to pay off these debts, the sisters enter an annual pageant, 'hair show' with $50k up for grabs.
Hair Show has more going for it in terms of story, well it tries to; although there is more of an ensemble presence going on with Beauty Shop, and Hair Show is less fun as it focuses on being a serial drama, with the added sibling rivalry sub-plot, and lacking the fun and cast quality of the former that Beauty Shop possesses. Gina Torres is probably the weaker link with an unconvincing villaness turn that sort of resembles Vanessa Williams' Wilhelmina Stater from Ugly Betty. Mo'Nique tries, whereas Kelita Smith fares a little better with a performance that was stronger than the rest of the cast, of whom were caricatures and aren't much to behold. However, I was disappointed at the writers mishandling Angela's romance subplot, and that I felt they did that character, and Smith's performance a little disservice. It left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I didn't sense the chemistry of these characters; something that Beautyshop had. Fans and viewers of the Queen Latifah-led, Beauty Shop will immediately recognise Bryce Wilson; however his character in Hair Show, Drake is pompous and not as likeable as James in Beauty Shop.
In an early turn, Taraji P. Henson makes a lively impression, but I wasn't keen on the Asian girl character - I wasn't bothered that she had braids, I didn't like that she had to have an accent and speak broken English. I would have preferred if that character was Asian American instead and spoke with a natural American accent. The stereotyping in this film was evident, but in that character, Jun Ni was a bad Asian stereotype.
The romance storylines didn't work, whilst the hairdressing-based scenes worked much better than the rest of the scenes.
Final Verdict:
Beautyshop may not be on par with the Barbershop films, - however, it is streets ahead of Hair Show, which is a Z-movie knock-off. Towards the end, the story wears thin and for a so-called film labelled as a comedy, there just wasn't more of those light-hearted and feel-good scenes Hair Show needed.
A somewhat pale imitation of Beautyshop, it's not horrible or unwatchable; it is serviceable at best and not a film one would rewatch every once in a while.
Overall:
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