Directed by Jeff Stilson
Written by Lance Crouther, Paul Marchand, Chris Rock, Chuck Sklar, Jeff Stilson
Starring Chris Rock
Release Date October 9th, 2009
Just what is good hair? Some might go with the simple answer that anything that looks good is good hair. However, among African Americans good hair describes hair that is relaxed and or extended. The process, the cost, and the origins, literally and historically, are explored by comedian Chris Rock in the terrific doc Good Hair.
Chris Rock has two daughters and they were the impetus behind Good Hair. Wondering whether or not he would advise his girls to straighten their hair or whether he should discourage them, Rock went out into the community and found something he might never have expected, an anthropological journey into a world of hair, products and styles; the beautiful and the bizarre.
The main setting for Good Hair is the hair salon and the barber shop. Hair for women is not merely a style, it is intricate to how they see themselves and how the feel about themselves. A multi-billion dollar industry has grown almost solely around the need for products related to a black woman's hair. At the Bronner Brothers hair show, a sort of comic-con for the hair obsessed, Rock finds a meeting of business and the bizarre that is something out of a Fellini film.
At the hair show there is a competition among stylists that is kind of about styling hair and mostly about the fabulous ego-driven spectacles that are the stylists themselves. These scenes are as funny as or funnier than Rock's very funny convos with the denizens of his local salon and barber shops. The interaction with customers and cutters play as buffers between Rock and Director Jeff Stilson's three set pieces: The Bronner Brothers show, the science of hair care products, and the final, and most effecting set piece, a trip to the slums of India where hair is cut in a purifying ceremony and is then collected, sewn and sent to the US to be sold as hair extensions. The scenes in India have a sadness that is leavened well by Rock's sad, humorous commentary.
There are also interviews with famous men and women including Al Sharpton, Maya Angelou and R & B star Eve among others. There is insight and oddity found in these interviews that a more trained interviewer than Chris Rock might have missed. Rock has a way of putting his interview subjects at ease that allows for unexpected moments of humor and truth. If there is one thing missing from these scenes it is Rock breaking it to these women where their hair extensions came from?
If Good Hair lacks punch it is because Rock is trained to go for the laugh and not the jugular. There is an undercurrent of anger buried deep beneath Rock's good nature. He wonders why so many African Americans pay unseemly amounts of money essentially to placate white people. In the barber shop people joke about the product relaxer because it is relaxing to white people to see African Americans with straight hair. Rock is visibly irritated with this line of thinking. He understands it, but it still bothers him.
In moments when he examines the hair care products, exposing their dangers-relaxer can melt a coke can in just over an hour- Rock shakes his head with amused disgust. When he finds that the products are dangerous to make and a danger to the people administering and using them, he again shakes his head but doesn't push the issue.
In the end, Rock is entertaining and his subject is fascinating. The intent was never to be the Michael Moore of the hair care industry. He had an honest question. He explores it with his brand of good natured jabbing. The journey for the audience is fun and fascinating and judging the intent rather than the possibility of Good Hair, it's an easy doc to enjoy and recommend.
