BLOW DRY
Directed by Paddy Breathnach
Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy
With Alan Rickman, Natasha Richardson
De Vargas R 97 min.
The most intriguing thing about this uneven, formulaic British comedy is the writing credit: Based on the Screenplay "Never Better" by Simon Beaufoy. What does this mean? Beaufoy is the screenwriter responsible for The Full Monty, and Blow Dry looks like an early, groping draft, with a hairdressing competition substituted for male strip-tease.
If Beaufoy tried to distance himself from this one, it's understandable. The screenplay is manipulative, predictable, and uninspired. What gives it a brush of charm is the talents of its cast. Alan Rickman is Phil, a gloomy, embittered barber in the provincial Yorkshire town of Keighley. He has some reason for his bitterness: his wife Shelly (Natasha Richardson) left him some ten years earlier to run off with another woman, their friend and model Sandra (Rachel Griffiths). They didn't run very far - Sandra and Shelley have a hairdressing salon just down the street. This is awkward for all concerned, especially Phil and Shelly's son Brian (Josh Hartnett), who works for his Dad and is painfully embarrassed by his lesbian Mom.
This cozy little world is shaken up by two momentous revelations. Shelly has terminal cancer. And the National British Hairdessing Championships are coming to Keighley. The movie makes very little distinction between the emotional importance of these facts, but in plot terms the edge goes to the hairdressing competition.
Phil and Shelly are former champion hairstylists, and Shelly, dying as she is, sees the championships as a chance to get the family back on speaking terms before she goes to the Great Salon in the Sky. Phil of course will have nothing to do with it, but we don't put any stock in that - the question is not if, but when and why, he will come around, take up curling iron and blow dryer, and win the event.
The plot bears no more discussion. What makes this an entertainment worth something close to the price of admission in this slow cinematic season is the cast, or at least most of it. Rickman, always a moody cuss, uses his appealing Bassett hound world-weariness to great effect; when he allows a smile to crack the dour crust it's like sunshine breaking through a gloomy sky. Richardson uses all her considerable charm and skill to make us forget as much as possible the dreary plot device she's been saddled with. Griffiths is good, despite an embarrassing scene in which she does a Japanese impression. Bill Nighy (the lead singer in Still Crazy) adds a deliciously conniving character as Phil's unscrupulous hairdressing rival, and Warren Clarke is funny as the town's showbiz-happy mayor. And any movie that has Rosemary Harris, even in a badly underwritten character, has some claim on our affections. The young folks, imported from Hollywood for teen appeal, are a split decision: Hartnett does okay, mastering the Yorkshire dialect effectively, but the ingE9nue Rachel Leigh Cook is a = washout. Beaufoy's script should have been left in its drawer, and this cast used for something better suited to its talents
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