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Short on top, long in the back: An awful lot of people in this amusing and enlightening documentary, American Mullet, agree that the mullet haircut (or, believe it or not, the "shlong," i.e., short-and-long) is an ugly 'do. But that doesn't stop a broad and mixed population of mullet-heads, coast to coast, from sporting it for all kinds of reasons. Lesbians like it (according to those speaking on camera) because it is both butch and feminine. Some Native Americans like it because it's a streamlined version of a traditional look. Stuck-in-the-'80s rockers like it because, for them, time has stood still. Bikers, wrestlers, Pat Benatar-wannabes: Everyone, as Jean Renoir once said, has their reasons. As this bemused film looks for America through the prism of an all-purpose, bad coiffure, director Jennifer Arnold reminds us that some subjects can be simultaneously absurd and profoundly revealing about such delicate matters as personal identity. --Tom Keogh
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