oof

Growin' A Beard (2003)

Growin' A Beard is a hilarious 30 minute documentary that follows the men of Shamrock, TX (and a hairy outsider) as they compete in the town's annual Beard Growing Contest.

Yep. That's pretty much the whole of it. With the exception of the hilarity.

The good news is this doc is 30 minutes long. The bad news is this doc is about 15 minutes too long. Oof. File this under SKIP IT.

What sounded like something right up our alley - a silly sort of competition with a bit of tangential history to place it into a (semi) greater perspective....fell a bit flat. And it took like eight years for them to get it finished. Unfortunately, it also felt like it took 10 years to watch.

Honestly, the beard growing stuff was fine, the folks were open and kinda interesting, but all a wee bit two homogeneous. I couldn't tell you their names or even how to tell them apart. The contestants/townsfolk were all kind of the same guy. Nice enough, but you never get to really know them well enough to write home about.

The filmmakers also had the ripe potential back story of a dying town trying to hang onto with its dying tradition. They even lucked into some amazing home footage from 40-50 years back.

It just wasn't there. No hook, nothing even shiny to keep me interested until the end. The whole time it's felt like an inside joke that really never paid off. It's like they reached a bit too far out of the story's own grasp. I doubt I'll remember this doc in a few years when my brain fills up with more interesting (and better told) stories.

The humor felt...stuck. Like the want to enjoy the tongue-in-cheek silliness of the competition, but tripped it up.

I do have to give props to the soundtrack by an Austin band, The Gourds. Great, upbeat covers of Route 66 and some rollicking Irish-inflected instrumentals. Ignore the rock-a-billy bullshit of the title track...the rest is worth a listen.

Lesson: Don't take a 15 minute idea and kill it by turning it into 30.