Hair Love (2019) User Reviews

a bit of comedy with a touching ending

[SnoopyStyle · 8/10 · 9 February 2020]

The day has arrived and a little girl is excited to do her hair using internet tutorials. It does not go well. Her father is horrified and tries desperately to fix it to no avail. He is KO'ed. With a little help, they are able to fix her hair and the true reason for the date's importance is revealed. The boxing is funny. It's a cute little short and then it hits you with an emotional punch. It's great.

Above average shorts nomination

[chong_an · 8/10 · 9 February 2020]

A black girl has an unruly afro, and grandiose ideas of the styling she wants - something that probably should be done by a professional. Her mother usually does her hair, but in mother's absence, her father tries his hand at it.

This is a heartwarming story, well done. I recommend it.

Hair rules the day sentimental and touching short.

[blanbrn · 8/10 · 9 February 2020]

This short picture animated film "Hair Love" is fun and touching it has a sentimental feel of fun and happiness. It involves a young girl who wants a new hair style and emotions are high as it's change plus her mom is bald due to cancer treatment. To make matters tougher her dad must fix her hair for the first time! Even twists do happen even though the picture is short. The animation is cool and well done too!

Very sweet...and beautifully animated.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 5 December 2019]

Matthew Cherry's book, "Hair Love" is a very sweet story. So sweet that a Kickstarter campaign was organized to turn the children's book into a short film. Amazingly, they were able to get the services of Sony Pictures....hence the gorgeous animation in the short. How they managed to get such a big, quality production company to make the film, I have no idea...but it's the sort of thing I'd like to see more of in the future.

The story is simple. A black girl has dreams of all sorts of wonderful hair styles for herself...but her hair is a huge and unruly mess. Her father has no idea how to style the hair...and fails miserably. However, he eventually learns from a blog how to make his daughter beautiful. Then, you learn more about the man, the girl and their family...

I loved the story for three main reasons. As I mentioned above, the animation is terrific. The second reason is that the story is so sweet...and it is bound to capture your heart. And finally, there just aren't that many animated films about non-traditional girls...and many people of color have felt left out because of this. A nice film with some nice role models about some formerly marginalized people....and done in a way that isn't heavyhanded in any way. Well worth your time...and available for free on YouTube.

Absolute dream come true

[deborahakbar · 10/10 · 29 October 2019]

Everything about this project the animation the subject is just a complete work of love that all children of color should see read and pass on to their own children.

Amazing

[0U · 25 February 2020]

I loved this! Such great representation and a great story that, as a friend put it, "It made me feel all the things." I hope there are more films like this in the future.

Cute, but somewhat lacking

[evanjustrocks · 7/10 · 24 January 2020]

Hair Love has all the components of a real tearjerking short film, but I really feel like it was just trying too hard for emotion at times. There's so many plot twists that when the short film ends, it still feels like it is still getting started. On the animation side of things, I loved the character design, it reminded me a lot of The Prince of Egypt.

Simple story with deep meaning

[guriwho · 9/10 · 1 May 2020]

A simple story with a deeper meaning of what people of African origin as well as many other ethinicities have to go through every morning which might just seem like a few seconds prep for some. It encourages people to stop being ashamed of their hairs and instead embrace them. Moreover, the story is about family, hope, love and most of all determination. A sparkling piece of artwork totally Oscarworthy. Another shoutout to the music production team for their efforts to keep this short extra engaging.

Sony Pictures Animation continue to up their game.

[Pjtaylor-96-138044 · 7/10 · 18 December 2019]

An opening 'Pixar' logo wouldn't be out of place in 'Hair Love (2019)', a short by Sony Pictures Animation, as it perfectly captures the heart and spirit typically associated with the widely-accepted-as-number-one studio. It's a touching tale of father and daughter, one that hits its emotional beats just as well as its more surrealist comedic ones. It's both sad and hopeful, a portrait of a family surviving through tough times. It's feel good, for sure. It's also wonderfully diverse and body-positive, focusing quite overly on something most family films actively run away from. It isn't a masterpiece, but it's a great little short that's sure to put a smile on your face. 7/10

depiction of healthy relationships

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 8 April 2020]

I understand that Matthew Cherry's "Hair Love" is intended both as a celebration of African-American hair, and also to counter the image of African-American fathers as deadbeats. All in all, it's a fine piece of work, especially since, when Cherry won an Academy Award for it, he brought to the ceremony an African-American student whose school had insulted his hair.

Love for the Heir

[MovieJunkie5 · 7/10 · 31 January 2020]

Watching this short animated movie as a man with long curly hair it brought back memories. It took me years to fully appreciate my natural hair and honestly and that cap or bonnet would've been with me at all times. I enjoyed it, it tries to add too many twists and turns and when you're still adapting the movie is already over. The little girl is very cute and passionated about her hair but most importantly her dear mommy. Sony showing they too can do emotional short videos.

I laughed, I cried...

[IceQueen99 · 9/10 · 10 February 2020]

...I loved this little film. It had an unexpected ending, making this look inside a family's struggles and relationships truly hopeful on so many levels.

Girls Are Awesome!

[boblipton · 6/10 · 2 February 2020]

It's an important day, and a little girl with a monstrously sleep-frazzled Afro tries to get her incompetent father to put it in order.

It's eighty percent making fun of dads, which is still something we can do, right? It's eighty percent that, which is fine by me, until the sad but heartwarming end, which is almost certainly why it is nominated for an Oscar. It's also something that might have been been as a live-action movie, although the nature of the girl's Afro mitigates that. Pretty good cartoon.

What is orignal about this film?

[KristerFeldt · 4/10 · 10 February 2020]

Don't want to hate, but isn't this one of the least thought-provoking shorts you've ever seen?

The true identifier

[robbslaw · 10/10 · 11 February 2020]

This is a fabulous short. Only those who can understand how hair has been a defining standard of beauty for and against little Black girls can appreciate this story. Black mothers have been known to fret when they aren't at home to do their daughter's hair. The mother has a serious health issue but is concerned and then relieved when she sees her daughter's hair style. After this she realizes the importance and also lack thereof of hair's role in defining beauty and exposes her bald head. For those who fail to see this story's significance, current federal laws don't protect natural styles in the work place or in school. Imagine being fired because one wears her hair in its natural state.

Simple but cute

[blumdeluxe · 9/10 · 10 April 2020]

"Hair Love" tells the story of a father who becomes frustrated over trying to somehow fix the hair of his daughter, when his wife in the hospital is no longer able to do so.

The plot is really very simple and rather predictable. If this wasn't a short movie, it would make for a nice and creative detail. However, it is very sweet and heart-touching and you got to appreciate the work put into it by the animaters. It manages to deliver what is a sad event in a tone that keeps you smiling and thus takes away some of the weight that lays on it.

All in all this is a simple-structured shortfilm that plays with modern phenomenons and is surely worth a watch in order to appreciate the love put into it by the producing team.

touching

[Kirpianuscus · 29 January 2020]

Every girl father knows this challenge. And, after his measure, he solves "the delicate problem". This short animation is not just a solution but a touching portrait of parenthood. A film about family, seductive for children, more moving for adults, absolutely beautiful and imaginative. So, just a great short film, with seductive storytelling and beautiful drawings and music and...cat.

Natural Hair Movement

[Cineanalyst · 7/10 · 14 February 2020]

Evidently, there's a demand out there for this sort of movie, as it was easily financed through a Kickstarter campaign on its way to being awarded the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. The business of the father doing his daughter's hair for the first time, along with the judgmental cat, is amusing and cute, and even what I would otherwise consider manipulative sap regarding the sick mother and her resulting baldness figures into the theme of appreciation of one's image.

The picture coincides with increased media attention and new laws banning discrimination against natural, afro-textured hair. Appropriately, then, "Hair Love" concerns overcoming aversion to the protein filaments (at one point, the man imagines he's fighting the girl's tangles in a boxing ring) and appreciating its beauty, which is supported by some nice-looking animation. I also appreciate that the message is dual layered with the short help videos on hair within the 6-minutes movie about the same thing.

Hair Love

[cathyhoogeboom · 8/10 · 27 August 2020]

Amazing short film! It was cool to see a dad doing a black girls hair! Usually the mom is doing the hair and in most films the children are white. I loved how it showed natural black girl hair and the difficulties with it. Highly recommend!

Hair Love

[CinemaSerf · 7/10 · 21 March 2024]

When "Zuri" wakes up in the morning and removes her night cap, her hair - well it's big, very very big! She has faith though that her mum will come and groom it back into stylish and gorgeous shape. Ha! Not today. It's dad who has to sort things out - and he'd rather face Mike Tyson in a boxing ring than try to get to grips with this particular challenge! With her throwing a strop and dad well and truly out of his depth - we have a conundrum! Maybe one of mum's training videos might prove useful? Let's see! I'm not sure hairdressers around the world will appreciate what follows but it is quite a nicely, simply, animated story that raises a smile at the end.

ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL!

[leticiaross · 10/10 · 2 November 2020]

Absolutely beautiful story! I loved it from beginning to end!

A great short film

[benhopkins-09010 · 10/10 · 20 September 2020]

I enjoyed this animated short film I thought the animation was beautiful it was a very sweet story and I liked the relationship between father and daughter it deserved the Oscar for animated short so I would recommend this short film.

So confused..??

[marijayne-53184 · 1/10 · 15 February 2020]

The reviews are as pretentious as this short film ... It just makes no sense how and why this won an Oscar I feel it had to do with the Director more so than the film itself. As a black woman with HAIR and a loving father I don't get the theme at all and let's be honest daughters don't want their fathers doing their hair and fathers don't need to be doing their daughters hair! She could of easily went to a hair salon! I could barely watch to the end 6 minutes was way too long.

Mediocre watch, never as deep or heartfelt as it aspires to be

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 26 January 2020]

Sony Pictures' "Hair Love" is an animated short film from 2019 that runs for 7 minutes and was written by Matthew A. Cherry, who is also one of (surprisingly) three directors working on this one we have here. (Talk about too many cooks spoiling the broth.) He has been part of the industry for about a decade now, so this film's success is really a bit of an anniversary for him you could say and with "success" I mean the fact that this is nominated for an Academy Award and I have seen some people say it is not entirely unlikely to take home the trophy. We will see about that come Oscar night. My opinion is that it would be very undeserving and that the nomination is already too much. The animation is okay overall, but nothing stands out too much about it and of course this is always a subjective take, but I feel as if the film could have needed slightly better attention to detail. There are 3 or 4 fun moments like the father's face expression when he sees early on what the girl did to her hair and also in the second half there is more. It will depend on your humor how much you like it. I personally did not think it was as funny as I wanted it to be. For example, the cat scenes like when it gives daddy the eye for what he did or also the way too long boxing segment did not impress me particularly. The ending then is also not good. It feels really emotional for the sake of it and not in a way where it is really as touching as it aspires to be. The sunlight pouring in at them is just one inclusion that made me chuckle in a rather bad way because that (also the way it looked in terms of animation) was something that could have been done by a film scholar at the start of his studies. The painting did not work too well either and felt really random and when we are supposed to think it is a big moment when she shows us her bald head, it was nothing like that because it was obvious anyway she was suffering from cancer and had no hair. Or was it meant that she was not ashamed to show herself like that? I don't know. But it was not working particularly well. A bit of a pity here and also a missed opportunity. By the way, the only voice you hear in this film is the one by Golden Globe nominee Issa Rae. So if you are a big fan of her and don't mind animation, you can give it a go, but overall I give this film a thumbs-down and really hope it's not gonna triumph at the Oscars. I mean they cannot go for this pretty simple take only because the liberals among them are probably fond of the characters' ethnicities, can they? There are more deserving nominees to choose from. Other awards bodies got it right by completely ignoring this one. Due to the (lack of real) quality I am glad this was a relatively short film. Watch something else instead.

This won an Oscar?

[MAGALUV · 1/10 · 12 February 2020]

Biggest joke of the Oscars was this winning. It has no real story or plot. A father trying to do his daughters mess of hair? Um ok. What a ridiculous theme.