Chris Rock & Paul Mooney

"Good Hair" consists of two documentaries braided together, one enjoyable, the other enjoyable and provocative.

Chris Rock and a film crew covered the 2007 edition of the Bronner Bros. Hair Show in Atlanta, in which the Hair Battle Royale came down to hairdressers -- performance and conceptual artists, really -- from Alabama, Texas and Georgia. What these people do in the name of style! Cutting and styling, not to mention relaxing and straightening, is the least of it; the Hair Battle Royale is theater, pure and simple.

This half of "Good Hair" works well enough, but Rock reaches for more. In a voice-over Rock says that when his 5-year-old daughter started bad-mouthing her own hair, he knew he had a project (though he'd thought about filming the Atlanta bash for years).

More than half of the $9 billion hair industry, the film asserts, gets its revenue from hair extensions and weaves, which can run anywhere from $400 to thousands a pop. "Good Hair" takes Rock to India, charting the "tonsuring" ritual by which Indian women cut off their hair in a religious ceremony. The results of this are shipped to the U.S. and elsewhere.

Rock is a canny interviewer, in addition to being one of the funnier and more engaging fellows in show business. When he chats up a group of men at a barbershop regarding African-American women's hair -- the economics, the invisible No Trespassing sign -- the conversation starts out like a joke but becomes compellingly serious and honest. Rock takes his "Good Hair" job as a documentarian seriously enough to be interesting, but not so seriously that the film groans with earnestness.

In the final lap it's back to Atlanta for what feels like an episode of "American Black Hair Idol." Directed by Jeff Stilson, "Good Hair" would've been better off downplaying the Bronner competition and focusing more on the questions of why African-American women willingly fry, scald and spend the way they do. (Easy for me to say: I don't even own a comb.)

Rock is skeptical but hardly damning (why should he alienate half his audience?), but when you hear actress Nia Long and others talk about how they never put their head under when they're swimming, you think: Then why go swimming? When you hear natural-headed actress Tracie Thoms talk about the media-fed ideal and white-dominated mass-culture notions of beauty, you think: Yes. Natural is the way.

Rock thinks so, too, though he doesn't wag a finger so much as pose a question -- amiably but with purpose.

 

"Good Hair" Movie Trailer

An exposé of comic proportions that only Chris Rock could pull off, Good Hair visits beauty salons and hairstyling battles, scientific laboratories and Indian temples to explore how hairstyles impact the activities, pocketbooks and self-esteem of the black community.

 

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MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some language including sex and drug references, and brief partial nudity).

Running time: 1:30.

Featuring: Chris Rock, Paul Mooney, Ice-T, Nia Long, Raven Symone, Maya Angelou, Rev. Al Sharpton.

Directed by Jeff Stilson; written by Rock, Chuck Sklar and Lance Crouther; produced by Rock, Nelson George and Kevin O'Donnell. A Roadside Attractions release.

 

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