The Barbershop series featuring Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer shooting the breeze and cutting the curls proved an unexpected box office success.

It was only a matter of time before a feminist slant on the idea was in the pipeline - so before you could have a shampoo and set, here's Beauty Shop.

Leaving Chicago behind, single mum Gina Norris (Queen Latifah) is now in Atlanta perming the hair and pushing back the cuticles at Jorge's trendy salon.

Jorge - as played by Kevin Bacon - is a camp egotist reminiscent of a mincing drummer from a German heavy metal band and worth the ticket price alone.

When Gina flounces out on Jorge, she wangles a bank loan after styling the frumpy trout behind the desk with the help of a handful of paperclips.

With Gina's Salon up and running, she recruits a posse of sisters-with-attitood as well as Alicia Silverstone's simple-hearted southern belle.

To spice things up electrician Djimon Hounsou lives upstairs with his Steinway grand piano and ex-jailbird and ace braider Omari Hardwick is also manning the hairdriers.

It's practically a carbon copy of the Barbershop set-up…but with plunging necklines, microskirts and bikina wax chat replacing the male preserve of sports talk and macho posturing.

It's also got some good lines - the original dingy salon "looks like someone swallowed the Seventies and threw it up here."

Queen Latifah mercifully reins in her sassy street patter while the likes of Silverstone, McDowell and Mena Suvari seem to genuinely enjoy their un-starry roles.

OK, so it may be about as cutting edge as your local crimpers, but this perfect fare of its kind - untaxing but entertaining in its own way.

Tim Evans