Smartorhypo
Highly Overrated But Still Good
Asad Almond
A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.
Phillipa
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
MartinHafer
The Nicholas Brothers were likely the best dancing team in history. Even Fred Astaire praised them for their insanely athletic and incredible dancing in "Stormy Weather", saying "this dance number was the greatest movie musical sequence I had ever seen". Because of their tremendous talent, I try to see them whenever I can...and that's more than enough reason to see "Barber Shop Blues"...even if they aren't in the film very long.The plot is simple. It begins in a humble barber shop and when the owner wins the lottery, he turns the place into a giant barbershop night club instead of on hookers and liquor (misplaced priorities if you ask me). What follows are the Nicholas Brother dancing and the Claude Hopkins Orchestra playing a VERY lively jazz song. All in all, a lot of fun!
classicsoncall
An all black cast turns a barber shop set into a night club with lively musical renditions from the Claude Hopkins orchestra. This was a nice little surprise shoehorned in between full length films on the Turner Classic Movie channel the other day. It followed "The Story of Temple Drake", which probably explains why that film is mentioned in the "People Who Liked This Also Liked..." section of this movie's page on IMDb, otherwise there's no other reasonable explanation for it.Orlando Roberson was the featured singer here with a quite melodious voice, and for my money I'd go for The Four Step Brothers any time. Watching them perform individually you have to wonder how they stayed on their feet with those high energy tap routines, while their synchronized swing was exceptionally well choreographed.I wouldn't know how one would catch a wonderful film short like this other than the way I did, quite by accident actually since I'm sometimes prone to switching off after viewing a completed movie. Something like this isn't mentioned in the cable listings so you just have to be lucky I guess. This time I was.
Michael_Elliott
Barber Shop Blues (1933) *** (out of 4) Nice short from Vitaphone/Warner is best remembered today due it featuring an all-black cast. Thankfully, Warner did turn out quite a few shorts aimed at black audiences and this here is a good example of that. Orlando Roberson does the tune "Trees" and we also get Claude Hopkins & Orchestra doing a few numbers including a very memorable version of "Careless Love." In between the musical acts we get The Four Step Brothers doing a nice little tap number and this here is clearly the highlight of the picture. At just 9-minutes, this is a very good and entertaining short that perfectly shows off what these acts could do if given a shot. I think most people are going to notice the low-budget nature of the film and while many might be impressed with the sets, I thought for the most part they were pretty standard and they certainly didn't look like the same level that we had seen from other Vitaphone pictures. The musical numbers are all fairly impressive even if none of them really jump out at you. I think fans of the music from this era are the ones who are really going to eat this up but overall the short is certainly worth viewing.
msladysoul
I've been collecting black film shorts for years, and this is one of my favorites. This film shorts stars Claude Hopkins and his Orchestra with Orlando Roberson, and the Four Step Brothers. Great Entertainment, If you can find it, you'll love it. Film Shorts were the only way Black Entertainment could be shown with class, showing fashions, the slang, the dances, the songs, showing the top groups. You'll treasure these when you find it.
