Vidal Sassoon: the movie doesn‘t quite cut it

Cinemagoers tend to have a very low tolerance for adulatory films and it looks like Vidal Sassoon: The Movie might be no exception.

Born of producer Michael Gordon's desire to record Sassoon's greatest achievements, what was supposed to be a short film grew into a 94-minute feature-length documentary. Not exactly long, but still longer than necessary for a film that does little more than laud the world's most famous hair stylist.

The film follows Sassoon's life as he moves from London to Israel to join the army, and finally America. Born to a poor mother and given up to an orphanage along with his brother, his is a rags-to-riches tale of a boy who fought for every one of his achievements.

At least, we assume he must have, although the film does little to explore the challenges and obstacles a poor Jewish boy who wanted to cut hair must have come across in the 1950s and 60s.

It then follows Sassoon as he leapt from success to success. A true innovator, he was the man to cut hair as it hung, rather than force women to have it coiffed up: his famous five-point haircut melded Bauhaus with barnet. For Mia Farrow's starring role in Rosemary's Baby, he boldly cropped her hair short, a look that became a symbol of the swinging 60s.

"The film hits all the necessary bullet points of Sassoon's 81-year-old life," writes Zorianna Kit in the Huffington Post. "Yet it doesn't delve into any one point deep enough to have any emotional resonance.

"It's a nice gesture, but the end result is a glossy overview rather than an insightful probe."

For others, the sheer appeal of the man himself was enough. The New York Times' Stephen Holden said despite the film's "rose-coloured vision" it does a good job of giving a sense of "a sculptor at work".

"If this portrait overreaches for zeitgeist significators," agrees Sherin Linden in the LA Times, "it makes clear that [Sassoon] led the charge in liberating generations of women from the set-tease-spray beauty parlour regimen."

Although it features interviews with fashion world heavyweights such as legendary 60s designer Mary Quant and US Vogue's creative director Grace Coddington, moments with the man himself are few and far between.

"Sassoon is an elegant, charming octogenarian with a strong social conscience," observes Linden. "The film could have benefited from even more time with him."

The film's biggest problem is that rather than analyse or probe, it simply venerates. Director Craig Teper doesn't offer us much to chew on, and as a result Vidal Sassoon has already been scathingly referred to by critics as both an infomercial and a hagiography.

As Time Out's Trevor Johnston comments, "this lovingly made portrait loses momentum when Sassoon becomes a brand rather than an innovator".

Ultimately, however, this is an enjoyable trip through the decades, supported with a fantastic array of archival footage. It may be a tribute, but at least it's to someone interesting. ·