Chris Rock's 'Good Hair'

Good Hair is an "amusing, poignant, and surprisingly candid" exploration of "the multibillion-dollar business" of the black-hair-care industry, said Betsey Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. Comedian Chris Rock, who co-wrote the script, serves as tour guide, "coaxing answers and opinions from an eclectic cross-section of African Americans"—and "the result is a documentary that weaves as much comedy as fact into the narrative." (watch the trailer for Good Hair)

It's a "fascinating subject," said Keith Uhlich in Time Out New York, and Good Hair "is especially powerful in how it offhandedly shows certain races fomenting and exploiting the desires of others." But it's a shame Chris Rock "merely" uses this film "as an opportunity to crack wise"—whenever he's onscreen, "there's always a punch line or a snooty eye-roll to be had."

That's not entirely true, said Melissa Anderson in The Village Voice. Chris Rock "is certainly a sympathetic and curious observer." But what about "Don Imus' 2007 remarks about 'nappy-headed hos,'" which "underscored the immense fear of and fascination with the hair follicles of African-American women"? Rock doesn't get into it, and in that way he "betrays some of the gender politics that remain vigorously unexamined in this breezy, superficial doc."

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