Blow Dry

By Kirk Honeycutt

Hollywood Reporter 7th March 2001

"Blow Dry," a piffle of a comedy about a hairdressing competition in the English provinces, has a thoroughly manufactured feel that cuts against the flow of the story. If the film reminds you slightly of "The Full Monty," that's because it shares the same writer, Simon Beaufoy, and same formula. Both films concern a sleepy Yorkshire township and its everyday citizens, who get turned upside down when an alien circus comes to town, be it a male striptease or a haircut contest.

In "Full Monty," though, the formula was carefully hidden beneath genuine concern for working-class people faced with personal woes and family crises. In "Blow Dry," the formula is nakedly apparent, and the woes and crises feel as synthetic as a bad wig. The movie, made awhile ago and only now getting a halfhearted release from Miramax, will be hair today and gone tomorrow.

Don't blame the actors, though, for the comedy is well-cast with thespians who work hard to redeem the sluggish material. Stars Alan Rickman, Natasha Richardson and Rachel Griffiths bring more depth and smarts to their roles than the cardboard characters deserve.

When the National British Hairdressing Championship comes to the backwater community Keighley, this raises the specter of what-might-have-been for one local family. Phil (Rickman), who now runs a barber shop, dropped off the competition circuit a decade earlier when his wife, Shelly (Richardson), deserted him and son Brian (Josh Hartnett) on the eve of a championship to move in with Phil's model Sandra (Griffiths).

They all continue to live in the same quiet town. But Phil and Brian, who works for his dad and practices his styling techniques on mortuary corpses, rarely speak to the two women. What finally prompts the family to get back together for one last go at the Silver Scissors is the news that Shelly is dying of cancer.

As a plot device for a comedy, terminal illness can work, but in this instance it feels like a cheesy, desperate attempt to raise the emotional stakes and motivate characters through melodramatic means. Once over this hump, however, the comedy does contain several entertaining sequences.

Among these are Brian giving a Sid Vicious hairstyle to the cadaver of an old man; illicit tricks in the competition between Phil and his old nemesis Ray (Bill Nighy); a romance between Brian and Ray's American daughter, Christina (Rachael Leigh Cook); and Christina practicing hair coloring on village sheep, resulting in a shot that is best described as Little Bo Peep on acid.

But the movie is so grindingly predictable that the film feels false and airless. How much Beaufoy contributed to this feeling is unclear because the writing credits onscreen enigmatically declare that the film is "based on the screenplay 'Never Better' " by Beaufoy. This would seem to indicate that the film bears only passing resemblance to the script Beaufoy wrote.

Paddy Breathnach's direction is workmanlike, and technical credits are solid if unexceptional. The crucial contribution, of course, comes from Jenny Shircore's makeup and hair design. Her hair fantasies are wild even by Las Vegas standards, making audiences at least feel grateful that no hairstylist has ever done that to them.

 

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