From: jezebel.com

Well, we know what we think. With friends, family, and boyfriends in tow, Anna, Dodai, and I hit the theaters this weekend to check out Chris Rock's comedic documentary Good Hair. And most of us liked it.

Good Hair follows Rock's journey to discover what exactly qualifies as, well, good hair. Over the course of the film, Rock visits beauty schools, a hair show, India, barbershops, and beauty supply stores in search of answers. He interviews Hollywood notables like Nia Long, Raven-Symoné, and Meghan Good. He visits relaxer factories and chemical labs. But through it all, the quest for a father to answer his daughter's question anchors the story. Good Hair appears to have done well for its opening weekend - it made over a million dollars on opening weekend ($6,005 average per screen) with a limited release, and was 14th over all.

We all agreed that Good Hair was enjoyable viewing - but was it good? Anna, Dodai, and I try to hash out our feelings below.

I've had 24 hours to digest the movie and I'm left with the same impression I had yesterday afternoon: Good Hair was comedic - lord knows I love a good Chris Rock joke - but it was not particularly challenging. But let me back up: I think that Rock and his producers' choice to frame the film with footage from the Atlanta hair show was a mistake. Certainly, the Atlanta hair show says something larger about black womens' hair - namely, the versatility of it, the money pumped into it, the theater of it - but that's about it. For me, the most compelling moments were the one on one interviews - especially Nia Long, who spoke uncharacteristically frankly for a Hollywood starlet, and Sarah Jones, whose joke about "tumbleweaves" had both my sister and I howling in our Times Square theater - and the brief glimpses of Chris interacting with his beloved baby girls, who inspired the film in the first place. (Question: Where was his wife in all of this?)

I will give Chris major points for the segment in which he goes to India to see how the human hair used in weaves is obtained. The resulting footage was damning: Human beings in a third world country reduced to their body parts, which are then sold off so that comparatively rich women in the first world can use them as adornments. Ugh. Seeing those swaths of hair being sorted, laid out, combed through and spun into perfect bundles of shiny ebony silk made me sick to my stomach. I was also troubled by the meme/hypothesis Chris kept pushing about black male economic complicity - subsidization, really - of the weaves found on black womens' heads. Does Chris really think that the (considerable) expense of a weave or hairpiece is SOOOO out of reach to the average black woman that they so directly inform her choice(s) of mate and his accompanying earning power? Does Chris believe that weaves are what black women really care about when it comes to where they choose to spend their - or others' - money? What about ownership of a home? Secondary education? I found the whole line of questioning offensive, and the men he spoke to, even someone supposedly as intelligent as Al Sharpton, were more than happy to oblige him in it.