Let's get one thing straight: Doc about hair a cut above

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Chris Rock unravels the complicated relationship women have with their hair. (HANDOUT)

WHEN a familiar Hollywood comedian stars in a documentary that is not a concert movie, it might arouse suspicions that the film may be an exercise in self promotion.

Even non-comedian Michael Moore is accused by critics and conservatives that his movies are more an expression of vanity than social outrage.

Like Moore, Chris Rock is in front of the camera for much of the duration of Good Hair, a documentary he produced and co-wrote. But no one should ever accuse Rock of making the doc to get his face out there.

In getting this movie made, Rock had the best motivation ever.

The film is a response to Rock's young daughter in answer to her innocently posed question: "Why don't I have good hair?"

Rock's daughter has perfectly normal, kinky black hair, but the question launches a thousand quips as Rock, director Jeff Stilson and a documentary camera crew strive to answer the little girl's query with an examination of how contemporary black culture defines "good hair" that is simultaneously funny and dead serious.

One of the more eye-opening facts is that while African-Americans may constitute a minority in the U.S., they spend the most money on hair care, especially women, who may individually spend thousands of dollars on hair extensions and weaves.

The subject takes Rock to Atlanta's annual Bronner Bros. International Hair Show, where he admirably resists the temptation to mock the convention's hair battle, in which the country's top hairdressers compete in a surreal, tonsorial variation of American Idol.

Rock visits a "chemical genius" who reveals that in its most potent form, hair relaxer (a.k.a sodium hydroxide, a.k.a. lye) can dissolve soda cans. (Cheryl "Salt" James of the SSRq80s rap duo Salt-N-Pepa cops to the fact that her weird asymmetrical hairstyle was the result of an accident with relaxer.)

The film even touches on good old-fashioned muckraking when Rock flies to India to track the source of most of the human hair shorn in ritual "tonsures," largely to supply American beauty parlours.

The obligatory celebrity interviews prove to be the most illuminating, with actresses such as Nia Long and Raven-Symoné confessing to their own preference for straight hair, and actor-rapper Ice T wrapping things up with a priceless, somebody-had-to-say-it declaration on the real costs of hair obsession.

Call Good Hair a vanity project by all means, but only because it so effectively comments on the subject of vanity with such good-natured lucidity, befitting a concerned, affectionate dad.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 20, 2009 D7