Unmentionables: A Brief History

About fifteen minutes into this "history" of underwear, I turned to my wife, Anne, and said, "jeez, if I see one more voluptuous model suggestively writhing across the screen clad only in a thong and push-up bra...hey now, that's a pretty interesting peignoir, wouldn't you say?" But "pretty interesting peignoir" is not what she said, at all. What she said was "we're watching pin-ups for pinheads, and...whoa, does that guy have a banana in his Joe Boxers or is he just happy to see me?" Fortunately, for our marriage, this "brief history," narrated by Adrienne Barbeau, eventually turned back the clock and added on the layers, in chronicling humankind's paradoxical attempts to both conceal and reveal our private parts. Viewers will learn about the "Iron Maiden" (the rather restrictive girdle worn by Elizabeth I; though not, as filmgoers have noted, whilst cavorting with Joseph Fiennes), the codpiece (a 16th century fashion accessory which gave males the appearance of having a larger cod; possibly designed by an early ancestor of Adam Sandler), and the bra (which was "flattened, lifted, separated, pointed, and then burned"). There are some interesting historical and statistical tidbits here: women are, by far, the greatest buyers of underwear (both women's and men's); Frank Sinatra--who had a big voice, but no butt--wore some fanny padding in On the Town, and underwear as outerwear is a pretty recent phenomenon (key term: Madonna). On the other hand, 93 minutes is nowhere near "brief" enough, the really interesting historical insights are few and far between, and the script contains a few absurdities (such as the assertion that a Victoria's Secret catalog can be found "on every coffee table") and banal comments (such as "the history of underwear parallels the history of humanity"). Still, Unmentionables is a strong optional purchase for that worst of all collection development reasons: precious little else exists on the topic on video. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)