The Big Tease

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.