Friday After Next Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)December 20th, 2002
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Generally speaking, film franchises - especially those that lose vital acting leads - get worse and worse as they lumber through the multiplexes. Thankfully, Friday After Next, the third film in the popular Friday series, is far more enjoyable than its predecessor, Next Friday. Then again, Next Friday was one of the worst films to be released in 2000. That picture suffered from both the loss of its most charismatic character (Chris Tucker) as well as a dumb-ass script that delivered the same situations in a different setting. But it didn't matter, since the second film made more in its opening weekend than the first did in its entire theatrical run. Incidentally, what's wrong with you people?
We lose "Tiny" Lister in Friday After Next, but that ain't no thang because the story is much fresher, both in a figurative and street sense. This time, the titular Friday happens to fall on Christmas, which opens a whole Pandora's Box of comedic possibilities, including the filthy Project Santa, who breaks into the low-rent apartment leased by our heroes - Craig (Ice Cube) and Day-Day (Mike Epps). It's 3:37 a.m. and the boys have visions of dimebags dancing in their heads when this evil St. Nick (is he the one from the Fishbone song?) wakes Craig and beats him with his own Christmas tree.
In addition to taking every gift under the tree, Project Santa also jacked a speaker which contained Craig and Day-Day's rent money. Luckily, Christmas just so happens to be their first day working as guards for Top Flight Security. Coincidence strikes again when they're assigned to work the very same ghetto strip mall that is home to Bros. Bar-B-Q, the new joint business venture owned by their parents (John Witherspoon and Don 'D.C.' Curry). While "working," the boys meet the colorful Money Mike (Katt Williams), who runs a shop called Pimps 'n' Hos and has a sexy assistant (K.D. Aubert) that causes them to drool and fall all over each other. Like Cube needs more opportunities to stare into space with a slacked jaw - he's already a Level 3 mouthbreather.
Speaking of Cube, he also wrote the screenplay, which contains poetic gems like, "You remind me of a young nigger who fucked with the wrong nigger." Of course, there's always some incendiary content about the police, and plenty of gags involving the digestive process of Craig's dad. It's a step in the right direction, if only just for having the courage to not be another bad repeat of the original film (which wasn't even that great). But don't mistake Next for being one of the year's best comedies.
1:25 - R for language, sexual content and drug use
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