Infinitely more mean-spirited than Barbershop, its obvious inspiration, even though writer-director Mark Brown had a screenwriting hand in that earlier film. What felt like joyful camaraderie in the first movie comes across here as nasty bickering. There is plenty of hatefulness to go around, most of it involving a flamboyant stylist who is repeatedly ridiculed for his sexual orientation. None of this is leavened by the comic touch of the likes of Cedric the Entertainer, who helped Barbershop, in its finest moments, echo the edgy humor and righteous anger of Spike Lee’s seminal Do the Right Thing. It’s a fine line between biting humor and outright bigotry and The Salon spends most of its time on the wrong side of it.
