You can see where "Blow Dry" is going almost from the start. When a small town in the north of England is chosen to host the annual British hair styling championships, dozens of out-there big city folk descend upon unassuming Keighley. The burg just happens to be the hometown of the London-based winner of two of three titles in the triple crown of UK hair cutters. He heads to the town confident of his ability to nab the third jewel.
But his erstwhile number-one rival, Phil (Alan Rickman), has been out of international competition for a long time and now runs a barber shop in Keighley with his son Brian (Josh Harnett), doing short back and sides for the local fellas.
Meanwhile, Phil's ex-wife Shelley (Natasha Richardson) and her girlfriend Sandra (Rachel Griffiths), who was Phil's top model before she took off with Shelley, run a women's salon in town. Father and son haven't spoken with mom and girlfriend/ex-model in a decade.
Now, mom is dying of cancer and wants to tie up the loose ends of her life, which means fashioning one big happy family from this less-than-enthusiastic foursome. Shelley decides competing as a team in the championships will accomplish this, but is met with opposition on all fronts.
That is, until the aforementioned nemesis Ray (Bill Nighy) arrives with his beautiful American daughter Christina (Rachael Leigh Cook) and a flash sidekick in tow and a slew of dirty tricks up his sleeve. Now, the impetus is provided for the "family" to combine its skills and compete as the home team.
"Blow Dry," directed by Paddy Breathnach and based on a screenplay by "The Full Monty" writer Simon Beaufoy,suffers from some especially arid story lines -- the love interest between Brian and Christina is so obvious as to be embarrassing. And with only Phil, Brian, Shelley, Sharon and Christina carefully drawn and developed, they appear to be the only human characters in a feature-length cartoon.
But although the plots are banal and predictable, there are, along the way, loads of funny scenes and a few tender ones that tug at all the right emotional strings. Ultimately, despite its drawbacks, the ride to the inevitable result in "Blow Dry" is an enjoyable, if unenlightening, one.
Grade: B
"Blow Dry" opens Wed., March 7, at Oriental's Downer Theatre.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
