This complete waste of 82 minutes finds documentarian Morgan Spurlock taking a look at current trends in men’s grooming, with a random sampling of interviews with people who have no idea what they’re talking about — but they’re famous.
You get comments from people like Paul Rudd, Adam Carolla and Judd Apatow, all trying to be funny, but not one says anything remotely amusing or worth hearing.
It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of Spurlock, for taking on a topic he has no interest in investigating and then filling it up with remarks that should have been left on the cutting-room floor — made by people who shouldn’t have been in the documentary in the first place. Why are Jason Bateman and Will Arnett even here, except as a demonstration of Spurlock’s clout and reach?
You get a pretty good idea that things have gone off the rails when the whole first section is devoted to Spurlock’s shaving his own mustache (no, I’m not kidding), an event that he seems to consider akin to Mark Twain’s getting a mohawk. A few modest jokes can’t hide the love. Self-deprecation is the sneakiest form of narcissism.
The sad thing is that he has bungled a rich topic. The story of men’s fashion and grooming — of the trend toward men’s buying products and tending to their own sex appeal — is one that goes back to the 1920s. It has to do with the move from the country to the city and to the presence of women in the workplace, starting in the 1910s. It has to do with the rise of advertising in the 1920s and the cultural change that happened following World War I.
It has to do with lots of things that are really interesting, a lot more interesting than anything Spurlock hints at here. Spurlock has lazied his way through yet another documentary, making a dumb movie from a smart subject.
MANSOME
(D) Directed by Morgan Spurlock. PG-13 (language and some crude material). 82 mins. At the Angelika Dallas.
