Next Friday (2000) - Movie Review

Next Friday marks the return of Craig (Ice Cube), this time looking at a day in his life as he visits his cousin in the suburbs, becomes the target of a Mexican gang, and an object of revenge for Debo, the man whom Craig put in jail a few years back. It's going to make for one interesting day.

Ice Cube, once again penning the script, dishes out comical incident after comical incident, making Next Friday nearly as enjoyable as Friday. The movie is almost slapstick but not quite, because any of this stuff could happen, and pretty entertaining, as the situation escalates as the day goes on.

Unfortunately, gone is Smokey (Chris Tucker), who made up a big part of the comedy in the first movie, but Ice Cube makes up for it by making his character just a little more three dimensional, and adding some other characters that are even better. The leader of the Mexican gang is pretty funny, a sort of mockery of the Mexican tough guy (he's sort of short yet still really tough).

All in all, Next Friday is a pretty funny and entertaining movie. Like most sequels, it isn't as good as the original, but at least this one is still pretty good. I'll hand to Ice Cube... he knows how to write a comedy, and he does a decent job acting, too.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.