When it comes to the movie making business, one of the most dangerous paths to travel down is that of doing sequels. Very rarely is the offspring of an original movie better than the master.

Many times, such as with “Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” the sequel will take jokes and popular one-liners from the prototype and re-use them in the follow up.

“Next Friday,” the latest from writer/actor/rapper Ice Cube, falls victim to this horrible scheme of recycling old funnies and results in a mediocre movie lacking originality and filled with un-answered questions.

Also missing from “Next Friday” is the reason the original film reached such a high cult status. Chris Tucker is nowhere to be found. He is only mentioned in the movie as being in drug rehab.

“Friday” left off with Craig (Cube) beating up the neighborhood bully, Debo (Tommy Lister Jr.). “Next Friday” picks up down the road from that incident with Debo in jail and Craig still living at home.

But when Debo is rumored to be escaping from jail to come and find Craig, Craig’s father decides it would be a good idea if he left town for a while and goes to live with his cousin, Day-Day (Mike Epps), whose dad just won the lottery and moved them to a fancy suburban home.

Right off the bat, Craig makes enemies by hitting on some Latino gangster’s sister. They are rumored to be running some sort of drug operation out of their house.

When Day-Day gets a notice in the mail that he and his dad owe a bunch of money, Craig brings it to Day-Day at his job, only to accidentally get him fired.

All of the lottery money is gone, so the guys have to come up with a plan to get a large amount of money by the next day.

Craig, after seeing the gangsters carrying in a bunch of cash, decides they are going to steal the money they need from the gangsters.

So, as the movie continues, Craig and Day-Day have to handle the gangsters and try to avoid Debo at the same time.

Amid all the trouble, Craig ends up hooking up with the woman with whom he was flirting. But they don’t really show much of it or touch on it at all as the film progresses, leaving you wondering what happened between them and what the result will be.

Cube narrates the movie goes along, doing the best he can to keep viewers informed of what is happening.

But scenes such as the one where Craig smokes it up with his uncle weren’t talked about, even though the first movie revolved around him smoking pot for the first time and it not treating him very well. Apparently, it’s a regular thing for him now.

Once the ending comes around, it has a striking resemblance to the last one. Someone even gets to steal the line, “You got knocked the fuck out,” adding to the already cheesy chain of events that end the movie.

Cube and his father (John Witherspoon) provide most of the few laughs brought forth from “Next Friday,” and his uncle Elroy (Don “DC” Curry) causes a few.

But Epps, who was supposed to take Tucker’s place as the funny guy who gets his big start from a “Friday” flick, sucked. His portrayal of a high-strung coward just wasn’t acted with any believability; it was more annoying than anything.

Ice Cube is definitely a stud, but this is his worst effort to date as far as screenwriting goes. A few good actors keep you tuned in for most of the flick, but the lack of substance and shallow script hardly qualify this as a movie.

A big problem with sequels is that they are compared to the earlier works, and “Friday,” though a bit juvenile, was pretty damn funny and has turned into a classic for many college and high school students.

But “Next Friday” is no more than a bad deal on a bargain Tuesday.

2 Stars

---

Kyle Moss is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.