She is playing Gina, a hair styling character she portrayed in the movie Barbershop. Gina has moved from Chicago to Atlanta, and Queen Latifah has gone from cameo appearance to center of the story and a producer of this spin-off of the successful and fun Barbershop movies.

As she sings and dances, the household swirls around her. Her daughter Vanessa bumps around the house looking for her blue sweater. She can’t find it, and neither can Vanessa’s grandmother or Darnelle, the two women who share the house with Gina and Vanessa. But when Vanessa whines to her mom that she can’t find her sweater, Gina knows just where it is. Gina is a very formidable character, as a mom, a woman, or a stylist.

Gina has moved her family from Chicago to Atlanta so Vanessa can pursue her talent for music. While Vanessa attends a very good school, Gina works in a very trendy and pricey salon run by Jorge.

Gina and Jorge are not a good mix. Everything that is genuine, authentic and unaffected about Gina is exactly the opposite in Jorge. Kevin Bacon transforms himself into a German-accented, snobbish, overly tanned fashion victim with really tortured processed and colored hair. Jorge is such an unpleasant diva it is hard to imagine that Gina has lasted any time at all in his salon. Its hard to imagine Gina could be so happy getting ready to go to work for this jerk.

But, we’re only in Jorge’s place long enough to get introduced to a few people that will come with Gina when she has the inevitable disagreement with Jorge that makes her quit. Jorge’s place caters mostly to white women, but Gina isn’t uncomfortable with the surroundings.

After Gina performs a mini-makeover on a mousy loan officer, she is given a modest loan that lets her get started in a very small shop desperately in need of a makeover. “It looks like the 70s swallowed this place whole and then threw it up.”

But with the removal of some bad art, a fresher color on the walls, bottled water and cappuccino at the ready for customers and a nicely framed picture of Madame C.J. Walker hung on the wall, Gina is ready for business.

Well, almost. She has inherited some stylists from the previous owner. Two of them walk out immediately when Gina’s friend Lynn, the whitest girl imaginable, arrives at the shop to start work. Poor Alicia Silverstone. Her Southern accent isn’t very good, and her character is mostly a good-hearted wimp. Like Troy Garrity in Barbershop, she has a lot to prove as the token white stylist. But Beauty Shop, even more than Barbershop, wants things to come around right, and this includes improved understanding between people of different colors.

The stylists who stick around, other neighborhood characters, and customers old and new create the environment which fuels the funniest, most enjoyable scenes in the movie. Instead of Cedric the Entertainer, the elder stateswoman of Gina’s is Alfre Woodard. She isn’t given the comic opportunities of Cedric, but she can find a Maya Angelou verse for every occasion. Cedric’s counterpart in Beauty Shop is Catfish Rita (Sheryl Underwood). She is funny and fast-talking, especially when talking about all the kinds of fat she uses to cook her greens as she convinces Andie MacDowell that adding a little weight to her backside will only make her happier and more attractive.

There are plenty of laughs and very likable characters in Beauty Shop. Only Jorge and another white customer, played by Mena Suvari, turn out to be genuinely dislikable characters, but Beauty Shop isn’t as good as it should be. There is little attempt to make anything remotely complex. Darnelle (Keshia Knight Pulliam, almost unrecognizable from the “Cosby Show”) threatens to be trouble, but with a couple of stern lectures from Gina, she turns out just fine.

Gina’s place needs a lot of electrical work done. Djimon Hounsou plays the outrageously hunky electrician Joe who lives upstairs from the shop. Though Gina encourages her daughter’s musical career, which includes familiarity with the classics, Gina spends half the movie calling Joe’s music annoying noise. Mmm-hmmm.

Gina is smart enough to immediately hire as a stylist a very handsome, very sweaty, truck-driving man who has gorgeous braids and does them himself. She knows he will bring in lots of female customers. But it doesn’t occur to her to market on her own a homemade hair conditioner that works wonders on her clients, so much so that they call it, affectionately, “hair crack.” She figures it out after her hair conditioner has served the plot and is needed for one aspect of the happy ending.

When Gina’s shop is wrecked by vandals, she goes to work the next day after her daughter’s recital, all dressed up to style hair and not clean up a mess. Guess what? The girls have come in and fixed the place up!

Beauty Shop also lacks even a hint of the irreverence that made the first Barbershop a must-see. If it had a little more spice, Maya Angelou and Oprah might get a little bit of fun made of them instead of being spoken of in purely worshipful tones. The raunchiest character is a pre-teen boy who follows women around with a video camera that, since he is so short, tends to focus on the behinds with which he is obsessed. Adele Givens plays DJ Helen, and her on-air persona punctuates the banter at Gina’s. But her sassy talk doesn’t quite spark the sharp discussions that I was hoping to hear.

Beauty Shop is good enough to be a fun night out with the girls, but you can easily wait til its at the dollar house. Take that money you save, go out with the girls and get dolled up or go out dancing after the movie with the money you’ll save. Hanging out with girlfriends - that captures the best of Beauty Shop.