Mansome

Morgan Spurlock's latest docu-essay offers a lighthearted take on male grooming, with emphasis on individual preferences for being clean-shaven vs. sporting beards and moustaches. Mansome is mostly comprised of interviews, some of which are flat improvisational sketches with celebrities, such as two of the executive producers—Jason Bateman and Will Arnett—who periodically reappear to offer brutally unfunny observations about themselves. Others are more direct conversations, like those with Zach Galifianakis and Paul Rudd, who are self-deprecatory, or John Waters, who comments on his own moustache “design” and how choices in style can go awry. Mansome also features sequences with hair stylists and their customers (some see the barbershop as one of the few places left where men can still be men). One substantial section focuses on Jack Passion, an obsessive whose long beard takes him to competitions, including one in Europe where his straight, yardstick-long growth is pitted against the hirsute efforts of other would-be champions. Spurlock's film seems to want to say something about masculinity, or at least about modern-day conceptions of masculinity, but its scattershot approach and frat-boy tone make it seem superficial and jejune. And those looking for laughs should note that the humor here is thinner than the hair on a bald man's scalp. Not a necessary purchase. (F. Swietek)