Bad Hair
- Director: Justin Simien
- Writer: Justin Simien
- Producer: Julia Lebedev; Angel Lopez; Eddie Vaisman
CGiii Comment
Not the easiest genre to pull off...comedy/horror!
But...Justin Simien does just that, with hair-raising effect.
Way back in 2005, Shin-yeon Won gave the cinematic world: The Wig - unintentionally, this wild wig was utterly hilarious! Now, in 2020, we have the wicked weave...and, with a deft central performance, it is intentionally [but, darkly] hysterical...with a mighty powerful metaphor regarding cultural appropriation running all the way through. It's not subtle in the slightest and it does tend to hijack the high jinks from time-to-time. But, hey...Mr Simien had something to say...and, he said it with a battering ram: Be who you want to be and not what society dictates!
Laverne Cox makes a brief appearance as the wicked weave weaver...in a scene that can only be described as the most tortuous, teeth-clenching, white-knuckled hair-do ever filmed. It's gruesome...sure, this is one weird comedy! A comedy not played for laughs...the stupidity of the story is the comedy...otherwise, it's played completely straight.
It's a camp, hairy horror...that struggles a little from over-writing and under-funding. But...it is massively entertaining.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
During the rise of New Jack Swing in 1989, an ambitious young woman from Compton, L.A. aspires to become a VJ but is told she doesn't have the right hair, the right face, or the right skin color to succeed in the image obsessed world of music television. She strikes a Faustian bargain with the new head of a music network who tells her to get a weave, but this new hairstyle turns out to be anything but easy to maintain.
Cast & Characters
Laverne Cox as Virgie
Corinne Massiah as Young Linda
Vanessa Williams as Zora
Michelle Hurd as Maxine
Judith Scott as Edna
Moses Storm as Executive 'Justin'
Robin Thede as Denise
Ashley Blaine Featherson as Rosalyn
Steve Zissis as Baxter Tannen
MC Lyte as Coral
Yaani King Mondschein as Sista Soul
Nataliz Jimenez as Rolling Stone Reporter
Madeleine Byrne as Maddie
Natasha Kojic as Katia, James personal assistant
Joy Sunday as Cynthia