Films released at this time of year often contain holiday overtones, but probably none like those in "Friday After Next," the latest extension of the Ice Cube-driven "Friday" series. Continuing in the tradition of "Friday" and "Next Friday," this movie brings another hour and a half of slapstick comedy to the screen, and at a base level, differs quite little from its predecessors.

Still, there are some new qualities in this recent installment of a low-budget and highly profitable franchise, and the audience of the advance screening laughed the entire night.

Ice Cube and Mike Epps return to their respective characters Craig and Day-Day Jones, two lazy men -- cousins, to be exact -- in their 20s. At the start of the picture, they have moved out of the suburbs where they spent the events of "Next Friday," and back to south central Los Angeles, where they share an apartment at the Shady Palms housing complex.

With Christmas just around the corner, they are robbed clean by a masked Santa Claus, who takes everything in sight, including the all-important rent money. Of course, this robbery happens overnight between Thursday and Friday, setting up another end-of-the-week adventure for the two as they must attempt to break free of a tenant's worst dilemma.

In their first attempt to retrieve the money, Ice Cube, of all people, who a decade ago rapped "Fuck the Police," calls the police. There is a humorous sequence between Craig and Day-Day and the cops, in which the director exaggerates the authorities' general disregard for the victims and for a very healthy marijuana plant.

Following this disappointment, the unlucky Jones cousins are visited by their grizzly, mustached, landlady (Bebe Drake of "Space Jam"), who threatens them with the wrath of Damon, her over muscled and ill-tempered brute of a son. Fearing for their lives and desperate to reclaim their belongings, Craig and Day-Day finally get jobs -- as strip mall security guards.

Once they are at the mall, the film becomes a nonstop sequence of slapstick antics for the security guards. Epps' portrayal is not surprising: Day-Day is foolish and abuses any imagined power that comes with strip mall protection.

Cube, who once again serves as writer and producer, makes Craig believably intelligent in this film. A few other characters return from past "Fridays," most notably Craig and Day-Day's fathers (John Witherspoon of "Little Nicky" and Don "DC" Curry, respectively), who now own a barbecue restaurant with the tag line, "Tastes so good, it makes you want to slap your Momma!" Unfortunately for their mothers, the slogan rings true.

A few more characters are introduced at the mall, including Moly (standup comedian Maz Jobrani), the mall owner and proprietor of a filthy doughnut shop, Money Mike (Katt Williams, another comedian), a diminutive clothing retailer in full pimp garb, and an attractive woman named Donna (K.D. Aubert of "The Scorpion King") who quickly becomes Craig's object of desire.

With the exception of two or three, the characters are purposefully over-exaggerated, a technique that works only to a certain point. After the cousins leave the strip mall and return to the apartment, the humor slows down, but fortunately the movie is nearly over at this point, when a climactic holiday party ensues.

These characters are by no means complex, and the jokes are mostly stupid and lowbrow. But, most of Ice Cube's script works, despite the minimalist plot. By the end of the film, the viewer has almost forgotten the missing rent money.

Nevertheless, the audience ate up almost all of the humor, and never seemed to care about the blatantly gaping plot holes. "Friday After Next" isn't good, but it isn't necessarily horrible. As I said at the beginning, the movie is just simple holiday entertainment.