Grade: C

It’s understandable that the success of Ice Cube’s “Barbershop” franchise should have spawned a feminine equivalent–indeed, one subplot of “Barbershop 2,” showcasing Queen Latifah as a sharp-tongued hairdresser working in a shop near Ice Cube’s (and sharing a back-story with his character) was obviously designed to pave the way for just that development. But as “Beauty Shop” has been constructed by scripters Kate Lanier and Norman Vance, Jr. and director Bille Woodruf (“Honey”), it’s a ramshackle movie, jerry-built from leftover materials and, in the last reel, so rushed to completion that it threatens to collapse from the effort to cobble everything together at the last minute.

In their telling, self-confident single mom Gina (Latifah) has moved from Chicago to Atlanta with her daughter Vanessa (Paige Hurt), a promising piano student, where she takes up residence with her mother-in-law (Della Reese) and headstrong sister-in-law Darnelle (Keisha Knight Pulliam) in what looks like a nice suburban house in a good neighborhood (at least it appears she can park her SUV on the street without bothering to lock it overnight). Tired of working in the upscale salon run by preening, officious Jorge (Kevin Bacon), who takes all the credit for her skill and treats employees like sweet hayseed Lynn (Alicia Silverstone), a would-be stylist whom he consigns to the shampoo sink, abominably, Gina strikes out on her own and manages (through rather improbable means) to secure a bank loan to purchase a dilapidated old shop–which, with her incomparable combination of brusque efficiency and hard-boiled charm, she quickly transforms into a working establishment. Naturally she assembles a colorful staff–Afro-centric Josephine (Alfre Woodard), outspoken Chanel (Golden Brooks) and sassy Ida (Sherri Shepard), as well as the enthusiastic Lynn, whom her colleagues initially shun, and one male, a hunky ex-con named James (Byron Wilson)–and just happens to have, living in the apartment upstairs, a handsome dude named Joe (Djimon Hounsou), who’s a triple threat: he’s not only an electrician who can help with the shop’s outworn circuits, but a talented musician who can serve to encourage Vanessa and a romantic interest for Gina. She also attracts from her old job some regular customers, most notably Terri (Andie MacDowell), a high-strung society wife with marital issues, and Joanne (Mena Suvari), a snippy blonde proud of her new implants and willing to use her business contacts to help Gina get a contract to market her magical hair conditioner. Naturally the neighborhood also provides a raft of colorful supporting characters, most notably Catfish Rita (Sheryl Underwood), who becomes a permanent fixture with her little food cart, and teen hustler Willie (L’il JJ), who has eyes for Vanessa. But all’s not well: a state inspector (Jim Holmes) keeps finding infractions in the shop and slapping Gina with hefty fines that could drive her out of business. Can you venture a guess as to who’s behind his incessant prying?

With all these characters jostling for attention and screen time, it’s no wonder that for an hour and a half or so, “Beauty Shop” is mostly a series of sketches of varying length but stunning predictability, as each member of the cast gets the opportunity to step forward as though on a vaudeville stage and strut his stuff. Some obviously do better than others, with the uninhibited Silverstone, Woodard, Underwood and Shephard, for example, hogging the limelight most effectively among the women and, on the male side, the utterly hammy Bacon and L’il JJ running laps around the cooly laid-back Hounsou. (That doesn’t mean that they’re giving good performances, of course–merely that they realize that this is all about crowd-pleasing rather than acting. And none of them strike the sort of sparks Cedric the Entertainer did in “Barbershop.”) As for Latifah, she’s intended (as Ice Cube was in the earlier pictures) as the calmer, more self-possessed nub around which the various comic spokes radiate, but as usual her smug attitude makes it difficult really to root for her, which undermines the effectiveness of the moments when her reserve is supposed to break down and she becomes vulnerable. Somehow she just never manages to convince that she’s vulnerable to anything at all; even the gruff Cube made us believe more persuasively that his shop was in actual danger.

What really sinks “Beauty Shop,” though, is that after spending ninety minutes in what amount to skits, it has to rush in the remaining fifteen to tie up all the loose plot threads it’s so carelessly spun. The camaraderie among the stylists, Jorge’s scheming perfidy, Joanne’s arrogance, Lynn’s feelings for James and Gina’s for Joe, Vanessa’s kick-ass recital, Darnelle’s coming to her senses, Willie’s becoming a good kid–everything has to be resolved so speedily that the movie turns into the equivalent of an assembly-line operation. Here’s there’s more than a hint of desperation in Woodruf’s direction, which had previously been, if anything, rather spineless and lax. But even through this one-damned-thing-after-another finale, the picture continues to look reasonably attractive, thanks to Theo Van De Sande’s pro photography and Jon Gary Steele’s art direction. There’s an underscore by Christopher Young, but it’s distinctly secondary to the parade of pop tunes used throughout, including in the inevitable transitional montages.

What “Beauty Shop” makes clear is that for all the change in locale and personnel, this is pretty much just another trip to the same old franchise that Ice Cube previously ran; and it’s a step down from “Barbershop 2” in the same way that sequel was from the original. And for the record, it’s actually the second establishment of its sort on the block. At this year’s Sundance Festival, a movie called “The Salon,” starring Vivica A. Fox and written and directed by Mark Brown, a writer-producer of the two “Barbershop” pictures, screened. It was about the struggle of the owner-operator of a Baltimore beauty shop to keep order in her place while fighting a city plan to close her down to build a parking lot. And it was based on a play by Shelly Garrett titled–get this–“Beauty Shop.” Brown’s movie never got wide distribution and is already out on DVD, so you needn’t worry about blundering into the wrong auditorium in the multiplex by mistake and seeing Fox instead of Latifah should you plunk down your dollars. But you might want to calculate whether a DVD rental for the earlier picture is a better buy than a ticket for this one.