FRIDAY AFTER NEXT

Hapless Craig Jones and his worthless cousin Day-Day are back, and they've just been fleeced by a badass Santa.

CAST: Ice Cube, Mike Epps, John Witherspoon, Don Curry, Anna Maria Horsford, BeBe Drake, Sommore, K. D. Aubert, Clifton Powell, Maz Jobrani, Terry Crews, Katt Williams

DIRECTOR: Marcus Raboy

"I'm not even sure the funny but slovenly 'Friday After Next' legally qualifies as a movie--it was photographed like a drive-by, and the lighting seems to change from shot to shot, as if the film is being developed before your very eyes...The trouble with movies like those in the 'Friday' series is that their success can lead to a need to inflate their importance, inviting pretentious descriptions like 'folkloric' when 'Friday' is much closer to chitlin circuit comedy." --Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times

"It's Christmas in the hood, and there are two or three funny ornaments on the tree, but not nearly enough of them to free the third entry in the 'Friday' series from that drab, been-there-smoked-that feeling known as obligatory sequelitis...But the movie is altogether too infatuated with its ramshackle spirit. Most of the gags take after the characters--they just sit there." --Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"There's something a little scary about 'Friday After Next,' Ice Cube's follow-up to the successful comedies 'Friday' and 'Next Friday.' It's the possibility of yet another movie called 'Friday After That'...'Friday After Next' lacks the spirit of the previous two, and makes all those jokes about hos and even more unmentionable subjects seem like mere splashing around in the muck...if you find any joy in seeing John Witherspoon's character suffer through more bouts of chronic colonic disaster, I envy your ease with laughter." --Desson Howe, The Washington Post

"Fast and raunchy, 'Friday After Next' surely stands apart from other holiday-themed movies for its gleeful low-down humor and a raft of uninhibited characters involved in one outrageous predicament after another...The constant flow of calamities spotlights a lot of talented and funny people under music video veteran Marcus Raboy's buoyant, good-natured direction." --Kevin Thomas, The Los Angeles Times

"Plotless comedy can't hold a candle to the original 'Friday' but manages to sneak in a few tried-and-true gags during the inevitable climactic party sequence." -Bilge Ebiri, New York

"...leisurely, waxy potpourri of messy sight gags, coarse sex jokes and all-pro bad behavior. It's a little less aimless and relatively smarter than 'Next Friday,' but that's not saying a whole lot. And it still falls way short of 'Friday' (1995), the comedy whose success made this franchise filler inevitable." --Gene Seymour, Newsday

"Surely laughs can be found in something other than this worked-over material...The third picture has reduced the 'Friday' series to loud, broad vulgarity, including Mr. Jones' obligatory battle with world-class flatulence. There's an audience for it, but it could have been funnier and more innocent." --Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times