As he puts it at the start of Good Hair, one of Chris Rock's young daughters one day stumped him by asking, 'Daddy, how come I don't have good hair?' That question -- and its attendant cultural, racial, economic, and historical baggage -- prompted the comedian to find an answer to why she would think her hair wasn't 'good' in the best way a performer knows how: make a movie. The result is a quick-witted jaunt through the world of African-American hair that refuses to sacrifice thought for humor, even if it never satisfyingly answers the original question.

　　 As frontman for this cultural investigation, Rock (who also serves as a writer and producer) makes a particularly disarming interlocutor. Hanging out in beauty shops and barbershops and easily getting people to open up about why they do what they do to their hair, it's quite easily his best performance on film to date -- a better compliment than you might think, given that the competition includes Down to Earth and Head of State.

　　 Good Hair starts and ends in the black hair industry's biggest trade show in Atlanta (the city where, Rock jokes, 'all black decisions are made'). There, the hairdos look like expressionist sculpture and the hyped-up hairdresser 'Battle Royale' is more a choreographed dance performance than a display of scissor skills. The very size of the show gives an idea of the breadth of the $9 billion business, but more illustrative are all the interviewees Rock brings on (mostly performers like Nia Long, Ice-T, and Salt-n-Pepa, but some more surprising subjects like Maya Angelou) as well as all the women thronging the beauty shops.

　　 The answer that Rock invariably receives to his questions about good hair define it as straight and long, the kind that can swing freely when the head is swung. The effort required to keep naturally curly black hair in such a state requires a battery of hairdresser tools as well as awesome amounts of relaxer, a goopy product made with large amounts of sodium hydroxide. Although Rock gets a lot of comic mileage out of gag sequences showing exactly how dangerous the chemical is (a single drop burns right through a piece of chicken), the point is made clear: this is hardly a substance to even stand near, much less slather all over one's head.

　　 At its best when digging into the unexpected, Good Hair hits a high point when Rock follows the trail of the hair weave industry back to its surprising source: Hindu temples in India, where millions of people shave their heads in the sacrificial rite of tonsure. A visibly stunned Rock tracks how these acts of mass humility are transformed into a farming industry that sells the shorn locks to merchants, who in turn market it in America to women like the film's interviewees, who then proudly make clear that their wigs are 'human hair.' All this in service of an illusion pushed by an industry perversely dominated by white-owned corporations.

　　 For all its humor, the film includes several snapshots of true anger -- whether it's a father's sad realization that no matter how often he tells his daughter he loves them the world will still find ways to make them feel inadequate, or the store owner who responds with a little too much disgust to a sight gag of Rock's where he tries to sell black hair to beauty shops. （英文影评）Al Sharpton (sporting a magnificently straight coif of his own) even throws out a cogent take on the ridiculousness of an ethnic group being unable to truly profit from the manufacture and sale of products that only they are buying.

　　 A generally superb model of how to make a pop documentary, Good Hair fails in the end to pull the trigger on this outrage, preferring to finish on a more easygoing note that suggests whatever people do to make themselves feel beautiful is by definition worthwhile. By dealing in such a straightforward manner with all the issues of racial oppression and self-denial raised by the subject, only to conclude on such a soft and padded note, the film wastes an opportunity for some soul-searching that could actually provide an answer to the heart-tugging question that started it all.

　　 The DVD includes commentary from Rock and producer Nelson George.

　　 Good hair, bad chemicals.