Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

The Big Tease (1999)

Director: Kevin Allen

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Crawford Mackenzie (character comedian Ferguson) is a Scottish stylist, 'the Red Adair of Hair', intent on winning the World Freestyle Hairdressing Championships in Hollywood. Cue excitement and the attentions of a BBC director. But when Crawford arrives in LA, plus camera crew, he discovers he's been invited to watch, not compete. It doesn't take a genius to spot the template for this Celtic-American 'mock-umentary'. But in the words of Nigel Tufnell, 'it's a thin line between clever and - stupid', and that's the difference between Spinal Tap and this. Rob Reiner's film looked, felt and smelt like a fly on the wall documentary, Kevin Allen's can't be bothered to maintain the pretence. Ferguson inclines to play it for pathos over laughs, with Mackenzie emerging as the resilient underdog, intrepidly bidding to qualify for a union card, enlisting help from Sean Connery and his high powered agent along the way. The mind boggling finale sashays into kitsch Strictly Ballroom territory and falls flat on its nationalist coiffure.

Author: TCh 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Kevin Allen

Producer: Philip Rose

Cast: Craig Ferguson, Frances Fisher, Mary McCormack, Donal Logue, Larry Miller, Charles Napier, Michael Paul Chan, Sara Gilbert, Chris Langham full cast

Duration: 86 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.