Barbershop

It’s raucously funny in its own right and in its own way. If the first season’s remaining nine episodes are anywhere near as laugh-out-loud hilarious as tonight’s opener, Barbershop: The Series will be nothing less than Showtime’s strongest entry yet in the comedy field. [14 Aug 2005, p.J1]

Barbershop is inventively edited, consistently funny and decidedly not for kids. [14 Aug 2005, p.3]

Raucous, bawdily good-natured. [14 Aug 2005]

Messy, unruly but occasionally quite funny, "Barbershop" doubtless could use a trim here and there, and perhaps a little extra styling. Yet in its unassuming way, the series breezily picks up where the movie and its sequel left off. [12 Aug 2005, p.2]

Pretty funny. Pretty profane, too, but still funny, and a better-realized weekly program than last week's Showtime comedy premiere, "Weeds."

It's a crossover series that works, and has the strong potential to lure crossover audiences as well. Expect this "Barbershop" to stay open for quite a few years.

What it lacks, unfortunately, is style -- some sense of smart, well-executed, up-to-date design. You can almost see the corners being cut, from the inconsistent casting to the cheap reliance on sex to the blatantly fake back-lot sets that are trying to pass for Chicago. You may not expect originality in a movie transfer, not when familiarity is what's selling the show. But you do expect Barbershop to display enough style of its own to avoid looking like a cheap knockoff.

The humor in the pilot is anything but razor-sharp: The writers too often confuse coarse language for jokes, and a subplot in which Calvin coaches a Nigerian co-worker on the finer points of the booty call sputters badly. Still, there is promise here, thanks mainly to a collection of intriguing characters. [14 Aug 2005, p.F4]

[It] isn't awful. Mostly, it's just too tightly packed, like those peanut cans kids open and giant toy snakes spring out. [11 Aug 2005, p.49]

Barbershop's tarty makeover - surprising, because three of the films' producers, including star Ice Cube, are behind this - does more than just sex it up for premium cable. The good will has been snipped from the franchise. [11 Aug 2005, p.53]

Though the TV version catches some of the tone and replicates the topicality of the big-screen originals, and shares executive producers, it lacks their grounded reality -- not too surprising, really, for a work of fiction based on a work of fiction -- as well as their warmth. [12 Aug 2005, p.E2]

Funny in places, but after three viewings of Sunday's debut episode, I'm still trying to figure out if and how the series will advance the original film.

Its rhythms are off, from the hyperactive handheld camera to the hyper dialogue. The actors come across as Shakespearean thespians pontificating on life in Da Hood.