Seeing "Barbershop 2: Back in Business," the sequel to the 2002 hit, is like going to your favorite barbershop and noticing that there's new chairs, upgraded clippers and a few new barbers. Things move a little more smoothly, the new tools do their job a little more cleanly, but everything still feels comfortable and familiar.

The original "Barbershop" was a raucous, low-budget affair, a love letter to neighborhood barbershops on Chicago's South Side, social hubs where in conversation nothing is sacred and top-of-the-head fashion can sometimes be just as controversial. (Think Bobby Brown's old "Gumby" hairdo.)

"Barbershop 2" brings back almost every member of the original cast for more conversation and community values. In the sequel, shop owner Calvin (Ice Cube, solid, relaxed and stoic as ever) fights off gentrification as a neighborhood revitalization project introduces an across-the-street big-chain competitor, "Nappy Cutz," which promises cheap cuts amid plasma TVs, basketball hoops and hairstylists in bikinis.

Calvin finds himself embroiled in local politics as a slick alderman and an even slicker corporate buyer close in on his struggling family business. The plot is secondary to the comedy of everyday life in the barbershop, where hollering, sponge-haired Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer) dismisses politicians, celebrities and criminals with as much mealy-mouthed glee as he does customers. (On the 2002 Washington sniper attacks: "The D.C. sniper was the Jackie Robinson of crime!") Cedric's character, clearly the funniest thing in the first film, is moved front and center here with even more cutting cracks than the ones about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. that created a furor after "Barbershop's" release. Unfortunately, he's also saddled with a flashback romantic subplot that goes nowhere.

Eddie is best when he's sparring with Queen Latifah's Gina, a character being primped and styled for a spinoff film, "Beauty Shop." When the two larger-than-life characters verbally throw down in the middle of a neighborhood barbecue, the film roars to life, leaving hope that "Beauty Shop" could prove as solid a film franchise as this one.

The lessons of gentrification get more than a little pat by the film's dragging last act ($5 espressos are bad, the film says, but product placement for Dunkin' Donuts and Popeye's chicken is fine), and the conflict between Calvin's shop and Nappy Cutz is resolved in trite fashion.

But a good comedy doesn't need to tie things up convincingly to work — it just needs to be funny. Ice Cube, who also serves as executive producer of the film, ably holds the film together, even when it seems there's more sermonizing than joke-ifying, as Eddie might say. With so many consistent belly laughs in "Barbershop 2," the hooked-up fades and verbal battles leave us wanting to come back for another visit, maybe with a few trims on the back end next time.

ogallaga@statesman.com; 445-3672