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Ice Cube (
Barbershop) uses his relaxed, raffish charm to glide through the third movie in his
Friday series. As Craig (Cube) and Day-Day (Mike Epps) sleep in the wee hours of Christmas Eve, a burglar dressed like Santa Claus breaks in and steals their presents and rent. Thus begins a classically bad day full of unsympathetic family members, obnoxious neighbors, squealing pimps, pot smoking, and sexy babes. No one's going to win any awards for this sloppy installment, loaded with preening stereotypes and half-hearted low humor; Cube generally plays straight man and lets the rest of the cast screech, yowl, and contort their faces, their performances as ornate and ritualized as a Japanese Noh play. But if you're a fan,
Friday After Next will give you a modest dose of Cube's goofy humor. John Witherspoon and Don "D.C." Curry return as Craig's eternally disgruntled father and uncle.
--Bret Fetzer
DVD features
The wealth of supplements on this InfiniFilm edition would be overkill for such an innocuous comic goof if they weren't produced in the same spirit of the film. So skip the dull production commentary with Ice Cube, director Marcus Raboy, and producer Matt Alvarez and go directly to the cast party talk-along with actors Anna Maria Horsford, K.D. Aubert, Terry Crews, and Katt Williams. You won't learn much about the production apart from how much fun they had making it, but that fun is infectious. The costume design featurette "Ghetto Fabulous" is highlighted by a shopping tour led by "Money Mike" actor Katt Williams and "The Pork Report" is a barbecue tour of the southwest. But the real treasures are the deleted scenes and the hilarious outtakes: the art of improvisational comedy in action.
--Sean Axmaker