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Friday After Next (November 24, 2002)
1995’s “Friday” was a laid back, pot-smoking comedy that felt like a long summer day with nothing to do. 2000’s “Next Friday,” upped the pace and changed the focus, but still remained a leisurely affair. The new “Friday After Next,” is something else entirely - if they ever need a cure for narcolepsy, this is the film to study. An aggressively paced, rowdy sequel that never, ever stops, “Friday After Next” takes the series in an entirely new direction: out of control.
Back in the hood after spending some time with his Uncle Elroy (Don “DC” Curry) in the suburbs, Craig (Ice Cube), and his cousin Day Day (Mike Epps), are suffering through a lousy Christmas holiday when their presents and rent money are stolen by a robber dressed as Santa. Forced back into the working world, the two get jobs as security men at a local strip mall. “Friday After Next” details Craig and Day Day’s first Friday on the job, as they dodge an evil landlord (Bebe Drake), disrupt holiday carols from some old ladies, meet gorgeous women (including K.D. Aubert), thwart some crackhead shoplifters, get yelled at by their middle-eastern boss (Maz Jobrani), and plan a party that will bring holiday cheer to all.
I must give credit to writer/producer/star Ice Cube for taking the sporadically funny, message-minded comedy in “Friday,” and turning it into the viable comedic franchise that it is today. “Next Friday” was a such a marked improvement over the original, that hopes were high for Cube to top himself with this new installment. But while Cube did up the ante here, he upped it in all the wrong places. Like a bat out of hell, “Friday After Next” is such a cyclone of jokes, characters, situations, and general visual nonsense, that one needs a seat belt and current physical just to keep up. It’s rather insane how fast this movie flows, not just in pace, but also in material to handle. Cube has thrown everything he could into this production, and without much of an attempt to sort it all out, this new “Friday” isn’t quite as successful as the last one.
That’s not to say there isn’t fun to be had. I enjoy how Cube writes all the action for one location, and then allows the insanity to build throughout the day. His ear for urban silliness is just as eagerly welcomed. But “Friday After Next” simply gets away from him, spinning deliriously through prison sex jokes, female facial hair gags, holiday trimmings, L.A.P.D. razzings (one officer’s badge name simply reads “A. Hole”), returning characters from “Next Friday,” Cube and Epps’s own shockingly limp interplay, and landing at the climactic party where the comedy explodes like a bomb sending little bits of funny shrapnel everywhere. I laughed a lot at “Friday After Next,” but I spent as much time wondering where the brakes were on this thing.
The golden goose of “Next Friday” was the introduction of comedian Mike Epps. In replacing the monotonous Chris Tucker as Cube’s sidekick, Epps infused the “Friday” series with a new playfulness, and a willingness to get a little silly for the laughs. Epps was comic perfection in “Next Friday” (as he was in his other Cube collaboration, “All About The Benjamins”), but “Friday After Next” plays at such an obscenely high pitch, that it drowns out what Epps has to offer. He resorts to yelling just to be heard. Thankfully, to help Epps out, there is hilarious supporting work from Katt Micah Williams at Money Mike, a Prince-lookalike, high maintenance pimp, Terry Crews as sexually liberated parolee Damon (who has his eye, and other body parts, on Money Mike), and the always reliable John Witherspoon as Craig’s intestinally-challenged father. As much as I wanted to enjoy Epps this time around, he just isn’t a match for the sheer velocity of this chapter.
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