Comb-Over
The marketing for Blow Dry makes much of the fact
that the film is based on a script by the same writer
who brought us The Full Monty. Undoubtedly, this
strategy hopes to cash in on the international success
of Simon Beaufoy's tale of unemployed steelworkers who
become somewhat famous when they start stripping for
money. The triumphs of the small-town underdog are
repeated in Blow Dry, this time finding for its
heroes rapprochement, validation, and a little bit of
fame in the back-stabbing world of competitive
hairdressing.
The thematic similarities between Blow Dry and The Full Monty are rather obvious, yet the results
couldn't be more different. While The Full Monty
achieves a modicum of comic and emotional successes,
Blow Dry merely falls flat. Unlike the fabulous
flips and towering high hair-do's created by its
hairdresser characters, Blow Dry looks more like a
silly little comb-over that barely conceals the
narrative bald spots underneath.
Small-town barber Phil Allen, previously an
international superstar on the competitive
hair-styling scene, has been cooling his heels in the
working class Yorkshire town of Keighley for some ten
years. The night before his last competition, his
model Sandra (Rachel Griffiths) ran off with his
wife/business partner Shelley (Natasha Richardson),
leaving him alone to raise his and Shelley's son Brian
(Josh Hartnett). Well, not alone exactly, as
(somewhat inexplicably) Shelley and Sandra remain in
Keighley, and open up their own shop just a few doors
down from Phil's. Even so, it seems Phil has barely
spoken a single word to his ex-wife and his ex-model
for over ten years. This puts Brian in something of a
pickle, as he is torn between his mum and dad, and
always trying to negotiate the tensions in his
parents' love triangle.
It is in the relationship of Shelley and Sandra that
Blow Dry tries to defy expectations we might have
about a "hairdresser movie." Along with the fey,
mincing gay boy hairdresser stereotypes that we might
expect, Blow Dry offers as well a romance between
two fabulous lipstick-lesbians. This has the potential
to be an interesting twist on homophobic prejudices,
and the film might have questioned knee-jerk
stereotypes of both hairdressers and lesbians. But it
fails to do so, as its real concern is redeeming these
failed parents and reuniting this "nontraditional"
family. The film's production notes reassert its own
implicit lesbophobia, claiming the relationship
between Shelley and Sandra is "one of the most unusual
human stories explored" in the film. "Unusual"?
According to whom?
"Blow Dry" opens as Keighley is set to host the annual
British Hairdressing Championship, where the prize is
the "Silver Scissors." Phil has desperately tried to
distance himself from and forget his previous life in
hair, but here it comes back to haunt him, most
flamboyantly in the form his arch-nemesis, Ray Roberts
(Bill Nighy), who brings with him his assistant Louis
(Hugh Bonneville) and half-American daughter Christine
(Rachael Leigh Cook), which explains her distinct lack
of accent (Josh Hartnett, on the other hand, does a
pretty good job handling the Yorkshire lilt). You can
already see where all this is going. If not, let me
give you a hint, each team competing in the Silver
Scissors is allowed to have four members. Four? Wait,
that's the number of people in our "nontraditional"
family! Duh. Now all the film has to do is get them
back together and working towards winning the contest.
Along the way, there are the requisite trials and
tribulations. Brian falls for Christine, daughter of
his sworn enemy, a burgeoning romance that the film
clearly tries to set up as some Romeo and Juliet
thang. Oof. Ray and Louis engage in a number of
shenanigans in order to rig the contest and win a
third consecutive Silver Scissors trophy. Shelley is
dying from cancer, which she keeps from everyone, even
her life-partner Sandra. Phil remains intractable for
most of the movie, until he learns of Shelley's
illness and comes to the rescue in the final event of
the style-off, and recaptures all the glory for
Keighley's own "The Cut Above" beauty salon, and in
the process heals the hearts of his wounded family.
It's a pretty tiresome story to be sure.
But what about the hair? All else failing, might Blow Dry be saved by some truly dazzling hair artistry?
Well, some of the styles paraded before the judges in
the various stages of the competition are pretty cool.
But not cool enough. Blow Dry never quite achieves
the drag coiffure glamorama of the do's in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, or the surreal, gravity-defying
creations of Edward Scissorhands or even the '80s
new wave camp styles of Liquid Sky. If stylish
hair-styley flicks are your sort of thing, check out
these other films instead, for, to paraphrase John
Waters' Hairspray, Blow Dry is not so much a
hair-do as a hair-don't.
