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BLOW
DRY
3/10
UK
2001
dir
Paddy Breathnach
scr “based on screenplay ‘Never Better’ by Simon Beaufoy”
stars Natasha Richardson, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Josh Hartnett
100mins
Yet
another by-the-numbers British comedy in which plucky underdogs triumph
against the odds, Blow Dry is a self-conscious attempt to craft
a Yank-friendly package in the Full Monty vein. It’s even based
on one of Monty screenwriter Beaufoy’s old scripts - shades of
rummaging around in the backs of drawers, maybe. But it’s been so ‘Hollywooded’
up under the influence of Miramax that Beaufoy is now trying to distance
himself from the project: hence the extremely unusual ‘based on a screenplay
by’ credit.
The
gimmick this time is hairdressing - barely a year since Craig Ferguson
combed similar territory with The Big Tease - as the UK national
championships take place in Keighley. The film was actually shot miles
away in Batley and Dewsbury, which is odd, given the way Keighley is the
butt of so many of the jokes. As is traditional with a tournament-based
picture, we’re rapidly introduced to a diverse roster of contestants,
most of whom have some history with each other going way back. The main
action focuses on the goodies (cancer sufferer Richardson, her lover Rachel
Griffiths, Richardson’s son Hartnett and her estranged husband, old-style
Keighley barber Rickman) and the baddies (a big-city team led by flamboyant
cheat Nighy, easily the hammiest, funniest, best thing in the picture),
and the plot develops in strictly join-the-dots style, right up to the
inevitable cliffhanger of the final round.
Blow
Dry isn’t at all bad, starting off strongly and rising a notch whenever
Nighy is allowed to strut his stuff - but it is a step backward
for Irish director Breathnach following 1997’s promising debut I Went
Down. It also falls a long way short of its most similar current competition,
American dog-tournament pseudo-documentary Best In Show: while
the British picture tries to cater for all ages by hovering uncomfortably
between campy laughs (Nighy) and heart-rending tragedy (Richardson), Best
sticks firmly to the comic stuff, and is loose, improvisatory approach
makes for a much livelier, more enjoyable experience. It’s not just a
case of Americans making better movies - rising British comic Peter Kay
pops up briefly as an audience member, reminding us that his Channel 4
shows handle this kind of material with much more wit and verve.
Finally,
a word about Josh Hartnett: unnnghhhhh! American studios have insisted
on US stars appearing in the British movies they fund since the earliest
days of Hammer. It makes sense for Miramax to use Hartnett and Rachel
Leigh Cook, their presence rather more likely to suck in mallrat bucks
than, say, Warren Clarke (who’s fine as Keighley’s mayor, though no match
for Best In Show’s rough equivalent Fred Willard.) Leigh Cook’s
character is from Minneapolis - but Hartnett is supposed to be
a local lad. He’s a charismatic young actor, albeit one known for knife-and-fork
hairstyles in Halloween H20 and The Faculty, and this is,
on paper, a sharp career move for him. But every time he opens his mouth
the picture grinds to a sudden halt, as both he and the audience grapple
with a tortuous hybrid of (vague) Yorkshire, Geordie, California, Oxbridge
and Irish accents - the latter probably a subconscious mimickry of director
Breathnach’s own brogue - all delivered in a rumbling slacker mumble.
Couldn’t they have just made him mute? It wouldn’t be the corniest thing
in the picture, after all...
31st
January 2001
by Neil
Young
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