Blow Dry

If a businessman's wife left him for a business associate, it would be just another banal break-up -- unless of course the associate proved to be another woman. But that's the least of the pandering by this British farce, which is based on Never Been Better, a pulled-from the archives script by Simon Beaufoy, the writer who became hot property after his pond-hopping smash The Full Monty.

The business in question is a friseur shop, and the grand event at the film's epicenter is the British Hairdresser Championship, which for some reason is taking place in a small countryside enclave. Alan Rickman, full of forlorn, plays the cast-aside husband with dormant cutlery skills; Natasha Richardson is his cancer-stricken ex and Rachel Griffiths her overemotional lover. For crossover appeal (both generational and cultural) American heartthrobs Josh Hartnett and Rachel Leigh Cook -- who do a passable job with their British accents -- are in the mix as young loves with vocational desires to cut and color. But Blow Dry, ignoring its talented cast, hangs more on tedious melodrama than on hair-raising high jinks. Bill Nighy as the foppish grandmaster of the coif gives the film its intermittent kick; supermodel Heidi Klum, sporting a teased and dyed pooter, is a palatable distraction as well. At the Avon.
-- Tom Meek