Morgan Spurlock's 'Mansome' is whisker-thin

Morgan Spurlock's documentary tackles men and their grooming habits, but veers into vanity. (Credit: Getty Images)

Vanity, thy name is … man? Mansome (** out of four; rated PG-13; opens Friday nationwide), Morgan Spurlock's documentary about male grooming, starts out strong, as it promises to explore the meaning of beautification rituals for today's men.

What does facial hair say about a man? He shaves off his own trademark mustache and upsets his young son. But then the movie loses steam when it becomes apparent that the men interviewed are not part of a new manscaping trend so much as they're simply self-absorbed.

What's left is a vanity project — literally. Mansome is a look at men obsessed with their looks, without much context as to why.

Dandies and self-centered people of either gender are hardly a new, rare or very compelling phenomenon. Instead of hearing from a half-dozen women about what kind of men they prefer, Spurlock could have probed the changing male self-image, the evolution of the metrosexual and why beauty treatments formerly relegated to women are now embraced by men.

The film purports to examine men's contemporary grooming practices, but it mostly just exhibits them. Spurlock, an assiduous researcher on such documentaries as Super Size Me and Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, barely scratches the surface here.

In previous films, Spurlock's cheery chutzpah allowed him to wangle his way into places that others might never gain access to, such as a corporate inner sanctum or the offices of savvy social observers such as Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader.

But in the case of Mansome, as with Spurlock's recent Comic-Con documentary, what's missing is perspective. Almost perfunctorily he allows a couple of experts to weigh in, but their scant anthropological observations don't add much to the conversation.

Because this film was an idea hatched by executive producers Will Arnett and Jason Bateman, perhaps the filmmaker dialed back his more aggressive style of inquiry and allowed his producers to dictate the film's light and frothy style. Bateman and Arnett also appear in the film, bantering as they spend a day at a spa and chatting about manhood. Being comic actors, they do what they do best: make us laugh. Ditto for Paul Rudd, John Waters and Zach Galifianakis.

A less compelling segment follows obsessed "beardsman" Jack Passion, who considers growing his long red facial "manhair" a sport and competes in beard contests in the USA and Germany. Passion has little to say beyond bragging and predicting he will win first prize.

Mansome's crowning achievement is its title.

Movie Trailer: