Third 'Friday' fails to live up to predecessors
By Nicole Rodriguez
It's Christmas in the hood in the latest installment of the popular "Friday" film franchise; however, "The Friday After Next" doesn't deliver all that its fancy packaging implies.
Ice Cube and Mike Epps reprise their "Next Friday" roles as Greg and Day-Day Jones, two cousins who manage to get themselves into various comedic situations. Unlike the last film, "The Friday After Next" places the characters back in the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where the original "Friday" took place.
This time Craig and Day-Day have moved into their own crib and are ready to celebrate their first Christmas away from home. However, on Christmas Eve a burglar in a Santa suit steals all of their presents and their rent money, and the cousins soon find that they have 24 hours to make up the lost income or their overbearing landlord will boot them out.
In order to accomplish this, the boys get jobs as security guards at a local strip mall where their fathers (John Witherspoon and DC Curry) have just opened the Bros. Barbecue Restaurant together. From this point on, the film seems to lose all sense of originality, and the following series of events end up seeming far too reminiscent of the original two films.
The success of the last two films practically guarantees "The Friday After Next" a profit, and it seems that the filmmakers seem to have put this movie together with that fact in mind.
Perhaps the greatest letdown of this film is the scripting, which was penned by rapper and film star Ice Cube (who also wrote the previous two films in the series). While the original film was fresh and funny, this script turns out to be flat and unoriginal. It basically serves to simply rephrase the same tired jokes used in the last two, only this time set in front of a holiday backdrop.
The acting is passable but overall unimpressive. Cube's performance as Craig Jones is bland and uninteresting, lacking the onscreen charisma required of successful leading men. He is a far more successful actor in the drama genre where he got his start (1991's "Boyz in the Hood").
Stand-up comic Mike Epps ("How High") is slightly more successful in his portrayal of Craig's dim-witted cousin, Day-Day. However, Epps' performance is nowhere near that of Chris Tucker ("Rush Hour"), who played Cube's best friend and original sidekick Smokey in the original "Friday." Tucker's facial expressions and mannerisms managed to make any joke hilarious. However, Epps' performance always seems simultaneously forced and predictable.
John Witherspoon and DC Curry (who reprise their roles as Craig's father and Uncle Elroy, respectively) deliver vaguely funny performances, as they did in the previous films. However they have so little screen time that their efforts fly by unnoticed.
Overall, this third installment of the "Friday" series is disappointing and dull. The filmmakers need to realize that this story has been done, and it's time to move on to a new day of the week.