'Good Hair' review

Chris Rock (Credit: Roadside Attractions)

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Chris Rock's young daughters don't like their hair. Hoping a documentary will get to the bottom of any stigma behind black people's hair, Rock's effort takes him to barbershops, the "Hair Battle Royale" in Atlanta and religious head shaving in India. He also interviews hairdressers about charging thousands of dollars for a weave, a scientist about the hazardous materials people use to straighten their hair, and celebrities like Nia Long, Ice-T, Raven-Symone and Reverend Al Sharpton.

The buzz: Jeez, that's an awful lot of time, money and chemicals that get put into hair. Will this doc help everyone understand what makes people—and, in particular, black people—do this?

The verdict: Rock works harder to find out what's happening than why it's happening, doing little to explore why society stigmatizes black hair and how fake hair compares to any other fake enhancements in terms of self-image. In addition to being funny, the comedian's a curious interviewer who lets his jokes—he half-seriously asks if getting a perm is more or less painful than being shot or childbirth—reveal the kind of truth more serious interrogators might not think about. (The film also touches on an interesting issue of intimacy, as black men lament not being allowed to touch black women's hair.) The complex and not-quite-unraveled point of "Good Hair" is, simply, that hair is serious business, for the multi-faceted industries making money off of it, for those who wish they looked like people in magazines and for the people who tell you to get your hands off their thousand-dollar weave.

Did you know? Maya Angelou says you're OK as long as you're growing hair on your head, not in between your toes. Not very poetic, but it makes sense.

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