The Salon: Critic Reviews

The comic equivalent of microwaved leftover food -- and pretty stale at that.

Writer-director Mark Brown, he of the Barbershop franchise, also has an inexplicable fondness for close-ups that cut off the tops of the actors' heads -- unfortunate in a movie about hair.

Given that Brown wrote the significantly superior Barbershop, he should know that when you make a socially conscious comedy, you've got to weave in plenty of wit alongside the wisdom.

Like a perm that won't grow away, it's stuck in the race-comedy mold of Barbershop, Barbershop 2 and Beauty Shop. Been there, done that hair.

Everything about it is whompingly (whoopingly?) obvious, from the hit-you-over-the-head narration to the tidy ending.

The main problem with the movie is the by now shopworn nature of its setting.

The movie is a little windy and over-the-top, and the gossipy references to J-Lo and Anna Nicole Smith are woefully outdated.

Despite all the stock characters and scenarios, Fox and company manage to bring things to life. And cut some hair.

This is one of those films where everything simply feels wrong, from the clunky dialogue to the obvious staging.

A feeble dramedy about a Baltimore beauty shop where someone should come in to sweep up the cliches.

This girl-talk comedy is a cut below its predecessors.

This movie abruptly becomes a too-convenient black history lesson, complete with a truly egregious deus ex machina. The Salon is a cut below.

Gosh, what a terrible movie. Stereotypes galore, and the humor falls flat. Paul Chambers, CNN.

Like a third-rate Beauty Shop. Skip it.

Vivica A. Fox proves to be a warm and appealing anchor for sometimes sitcom-level silliness.

I've seen porn with better dialogue and SNL sketches with less amateur production values.

Not funny enough, romantic enough, or serious enough to succeed as a comedy, romance or urban issues drama.

The movie includes a few good one-liners, but that's really all it is -- a forum for putdowns and sassy dialogues.

The movie was shot more than three years before its release, and it shows, as when the salon's resident golddigger says: "Anna Nicole Smith -- I aspire to be just like her."

At least Norbit tried to come up with fresh new awfulness instead of idling in these familiar old ruts.

Talks its way to a tedious, predictable conclusion that offers more yawns than laughs.

What felt like joyful camaraderie in Barbershop comes across here as nasty bickering.

After scripting both Barbershops, writer-director Mark Brown appears to have exhausted his ability to create new and interesting characters to inhabit The Salon.

Bottoms-out with this bit of dialogue: 'If you're going to be a ho, be an ambitious ho. Work uptown.' What unfortunate timing, given the whole Don Imus controversy. Life's simply too short for slur-ploitation with such lamentably low standards.

The Salon had any genuine sass clipped out of it to fit a PG-13 rating.