DUMB STRUM: Kayla Ewell (left) and Austin Stowell get close in “Shuffleton’s Barbershop,” while Danny Glover (inset) gets philosophical. (
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It’s almost impossible to believe that Hallmark Movie Channel has found a million ways to tell the same story.
OK, wait, let me revise that. HMC has found one way to tell the same story a million times.
And tonight they do it again. Somehow, they have connected Normal Rockwell, king of idealized American scenes, into yet another movie about idealized American life. It’s a movie based on Rockwell’s iconic ’50s-era painting, “Shuffelton’s Barbershop,” which shows the interior of a barbershop from the outside window, with an open back room door where old men are playing traditional bluegrass instruments.
This time, HMC has managed to take their overused plot and insert into this very white American scene what Spike Lee calls “the magical, mystical Negro”— the all-wise black man who teaches white people about life.
Tonight’s truly trite tale involves — yes! — a disgusted, jaded, successful country singer who goes back home to his tiny hometown to find himself.
(Last month the country-singer finds-his-roots movie was “Strawberry Summer.”)
The country singer, Trey Cole (Austin Stowell), goes home so he can reconnect with the wisest man ever to own a barbershop, Uncle Charlie (Danny Glover). Too late. Uncle Charlie has died.
Uncle Charlie was the man who really raised young Trey after his mother died and his father became distracted. Uncle Charlie spoke only in metaphors between, during and after haircuts — and was apparently the only black man in the entire town.
Anyway, Trey has visions of Uncle Charlie’s wisdom whenever he hits a crisis, with Charlie’s ghost spouting platitudes like, “Don’t worry about your destiny. Your habits become your character. That’s the way you live — how you push yourself, how you live your life, how you treat other folks. Your character becomes your destiny.” What?
Magical Uncle Charlie appears to the lost and lonely superstar like a resurrected Jesus, and soon Trey manages to save the town drunk from a burning church; makes up with his estranged father; brings hope to everyone; and (possibly) hooks up with his dead brother’s wife, Norma (Kayla Ewell). Luckily, Norma is also a brilliant musician and composer and writes the world’s most beautiful song for Trey so they can perform it with the bluegrass old guys and rebuild the church.
It’s all about as deep as a greeting card.