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Chris Rock finds in "Good Hair" that apparently you're never too young to have your hair straightened.
Posted on Thu, Oct. 22, 2009 02:15 PM
‘Good Hair’: Chris Rock’s straight talk | 3 stars
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Good Hair” is an hourlong documentary passing itself off as a 90-minute documentary.
Despite the padding, there’s enough interesting sociological digging here — not to mention the easygoing presence of comic Chris Rock — to keep us entertained and even enlightened.
The film got its start when one of Rock’s two young daughters came home from school and complained that she didn’t have “good hair.”
Rock was shocked that his own innocent girls already had fallen prey to the fashion expectations (and perhaps self-loathing) that leads millions of black women on an expensive quest for the hair of white women.
Nappy, he’s told, equals unhappy.
This film chronicles Rock and director Jeff Stilson’s attempt to understand the role of “good hair” in black life. They visit an Atlanta exposition that is the showcase for new developments in the $9 billion black hair industry (most of these products are now manufactured and sold by white-operated companies).
There’s a trip to the factory that makes hair relaxer, a scalp-burning concoction so lethal that workers try not to breathe the fumes — in four minutes it can dissolve a soda can. Peering into a huge vat of this “creamy crack,” Rock observes, “This’ll keep Prince for about a month.”
Rock even ventures to India, where the hair that is shorn and left in temples by the tonsured Hindu faithful is sold for use as extensions for African-American women. (Again, blacks are customers, not sellers. The weave industry is dominated by Asian companies.)
There are interviews with African-American actresses, as well as with the everyday women who congregate in beauty salons. And Rock gets the black man’s take by hanging around a barbershop where the guys complain that the refusal of their wives/girlfriends to let their hair be touched is a huge barrier to intimacy.
That’s why I prefer white women, one fellow claims.
Once a black woman starts treating her hair with straightener or weaves, Rock learns, there’s no going back. It’s an expensive lifelong habit; some celebrities admit to spending $60,000 a year on hair.
“Even a bad drug addict has periods of sobriety,” Rock marvels.
The comic’s reaction to all this isn’t so much outrage as a sort of gee-whiz amazement. In fact, “Good Hair” could use a bit of righteous indignation. At least the Rev. Al Sharpton isn’t afraid to cluck his tongue, noting that many black women spend enough each year on weaves to send a child to a private school.
Not everything works here. A bit in which Rock hits L.A. wig shops trying to peddle a trash bag filled with “black hair” falls flat. And the movie spends way too much time on a contest at the Atlanta confab in which “name” hairstylists stage big production numbers that are part reality-show contest, part Las Vegas chorus line.
‘GOOD HAIR’ ★★★
Director: Jeff Stilson
Director: Jeff Stilson
Cast: Chris Rock, Eve, Ice-T, Nia Long, Raven-Symoné
Rated: PG-13 for some language including sex and drug references, and brief partial nudity
Running time: 1:35
actresses talk HAIR in HOLLYWOOD
Nia Long: “A woman with a short Afro will not get hired to play a glamorous leading woman. … There are far fewer African-American images that are considered beautiful.”
Nia Long: “A woman with a short Afro will not get hired to play a glamorous leading woman. … There are far fewer African-American images that are considered beautiful.”
Raven-Symone: The film “shows all the things we have to go through to be beautiful. I hope this takes away the taboo of talking about it.”
| Los Angeles Times
Posted on Thu, Oct. 22, 2009 02:15 PM
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