Ice Cube reprises his role of Craig Jones, a young, out-of-work guy who is still living at home four years after the first movie. (Mom seems to have disappeared without explanation.) Nothing much has changed since Craig beat up Debo (Tom "Tiny" Lister Jr.), the gigantic neighborhood bully, at the end of Friday. But word arrives that Debo has busted out of prison in order to seek revenge on Craig. So Dad (John Witherspoon) decides to ship Craig out of town for safety until Debo is caught. It seems that hardworking Dad's good-for-nothing brother, Uncle Elroy (Don "DC" Curry), has won the lottery and moved to a nice house in Rancho Cucamonga.
Craig hangs out with his cousin Day-Day (Mike Epps, basically playing a clone of Tucker's character from the original) and manages to get him in all sorts of trouble -- particularly with the Mexican-American drug dealers who live across the street. (See what I mean about the suburbs vs. the city?) It also goes without saying that Debo finds his way to Craig's hideout; for no reason beyond giving Witherspoon more screen time to do his usual broad mugging, Dad shows up as well.
The first Friday was incredibly meandering; what little plot there was seemed to be an afterthought, since most of the film involved Tucker and Ice Cube sitting around smoking dope. Still, it had the advantage of first-time director F. Gary Gray, who went on to make the vastly superior Set It Off and The Negotiator. Gray at least had a sense of visual style that occasionally goosed up the proceedings. This time, Cube has stuffed the story with plot -- possibly in reaction to criticisms of the original's pacing. With the exception of one long dope-smoking scene, something is always happening. Unfortunately, all the new plot stuff is way old hat, as though straight from a textbook chapter called "Conflict Drives Your Narrative!" And at times the motivations are either unclear or senseless.
Despite the generally livelier tone, Steve Carr -- like Gray, a music-video director making his feature directorial debut -- isn't as interesting a director. His sense of joke setups and timing is clunky: An early gag about Dad slipping in dog shit is staged for minimum laughs. Cube, who has been dandy in supporting roles (most notably in Three Kings), is fairly leaden, though that may simply be the character's sullen personality. And Witherspoon always has been, and still is, grating, seemingly imitating the manner of Tim Moore (the wonderful actor who played Kingfish on TV's Amos 'n' Andy) without any gradations. He's got his mug-o-matic permanently cranked up to 11.
The most amusing ones in the cast are Epps and Jacob Vargas, who plays the top gun in the drug house across the street. Both get to speed-rap continually, and there are occasional funny lines buried within their verbal outpourings. It also must be said that both are playing the sort of hoary racial stereotypes that would be patently offensive in isolation; but Cube has made sure that there are other characters to counterbalance them. Whether that really helps will depend on your sensitivities. And forget about racism. If you're sensitive about sexism, you may have just a bit of trouble with Next Friday. This is a film in which one of the good guys pushes Craig toward a liaison with a hefty girl by pleading, "Hey, fat bitches need love too, Craig."
