Friday After Next Review
Posted by Ashish on 11.25.2002
This franchise is getting really old...and you know this man...
Friday After Next
Release Date: November 22nd, 2002
The original Friday was a classic. It showed exactly how urban comedies were to be done, launched the careers of Ice Cube, Chris Tucker, and others, and came off as one of the most original and flat-out entertaining comedies of the 90’s. Since then, the franchise has done little to live up to the legacy of the original.
Friday After Next is the latest film to have absolutely nothing going for it but a familiar brand name, and in today’s world, that should be enough to make it a box office success. However, good film it is not. It’s not even close.
The latest Friday stars Ice Cube as Craig and Mike Epps as Day-Day. The two get jobs as security offices at a strip mall and run into a skinny Santa impersonator who is stealing more presents than giving them. The film goes from there, and features a big party and plenty of unfunny, stupid gags and jokes as well as dozens of shameless, tasteless stereotypes.
Ice Cube is extremely dull in this film when compared to the fantastic job he did in the fantastic Barbershop. The rest of the cast ranges from decent to bad to horrible.
The problem with this franchise is that it has lost sight of what made the original film so good. Friday went on to be a classic because of a creative and original script that centered around a fantastic relationship between Ice Cube and Chris Tucker. Since then, the franchise has turned to extremely old, clichéd humor that has been done to death. They have also stuffed the two sequels with typical plots and scenes, where as the original film did more by doing less.
The 411: Hopefully this is the final Friday film because the franchise ran its course after the first movie. Everything in this film screams that its makers are out of ideas and are cashing in on the simple fact that the urban community will likely drove to it as they did for the equally bad Next Friday. Be wise, save your money and wait for Barbershop to hit DVD.
