The lasting lesson of Zorro: bad or fake-ass hair makes otherwise decent looking people into freaks of nature. Oh yes, from Antonio Banderas' tribute to Angela Davis, to Anthony Hopkins' "ponytail" of three strands of silver hair, to Catherine Zeta-Jones' crispy split ends. . .this movie was about the torture of life which is bad hair. Okay, maybe bad hair and kicking people's ass with swords, but mostly the torture of bad hair.

The most horrifying example of bad hair was shown with Antonio. I think we can all agree he's a handsome man. . .that accent, those eyes, that mouth, the too-perfect skin. Good looking guy, for sure. But he starts out with a Latin Afro and ends up with a Rico not-so-Sauve jhery curl. The transition occurs during a scene where Anthony Hopkins cuts Antonio's hair while the latter bathes in the spacious Jacuzzi in the Bat Cave-esque lair of Zorro. Don't ask me about that, because I was completely stumped as to why Zorro put a hot tub in the cave when he had an entire mansion above ground.

I can (not really) get past the obvious homoerotic tension between the two men as Antonio lounged between Anthony's legs who snip-snip-snips his way through Antonio's 'fro, but I cannot get past what the end result is: a jhery curl. Yes, my friends, a jhery curl. Anthony is cutting Antonio's hair so that the Latin Lover can pass as a gentleman of standing from Spain, and infiltrate the main bad guy's fantastic party, yahdah yahdah. So, he looks like a gentleman who's tight with the Royal Court of Spain in the 1800's? Um, try a greasy extra from Miami Vice circa 1987. Thankfully, some make-up and hair person awakened from their crack-induced coma, and managed to batten down the jhery curl to an acceptable level of slick for the party. The costume folks, though, stayed on the pipe and were completely out of control with the purple velvet. The party scenes are appropriately ridiculous.

Unfortunately, nobody came to the rescue of Catherine Zeta-Jones. The woman is a hotty and as young as she is, I thought it was a little goofy to light and shoot her like Lauren Bacall. The two-inch coat of Vaseline covering the lens made Catherine a blur of lip-gloss and hair. And not so good hair, either. The last six inches (she had hip-length growth happening) was a tangled and diseased mess of fuzz. Much like the entirety of my own head, but hey, I'm not in the movies so just let me be. Catherine, help yourself out, honey. Ask for Paul Mitchell spray detangler and leave-in conditioner to be available on the set at all times. We need moisture and a trim, stat!

Anthony Hopkins was basically sleep-acting his way through this movie, but his fake-ass hair looked beyond death. I guess he's practically bald in real life, so trying to stick a ponytail to his head didn't win points for realism. Why did he need long hair? What was the point of embarrassing a man who was once in good movies?

The wig factor screwed the bad guys, too. Especially the blonde Captain, I forget his name. That wig was a plastic bob, no lie. Even when he was getting his ass kicked across a mined ravine, his hair did not move. And his boss, the evil governor of California or whatever, had to be aged twenty years during the course of the movie. The hair people decided silver spray-painted highlights were the best route. They were wrong. Hair goes gray, it does not go metallic. I swear to god, I have middle-aged parents, so I know.

The production staff of Zorro could also have used an actual professional wig-maker, because gluing together strands of Barbie hair does not a wigeth make. Hair moves, people, it doesn't pick a shape for the day. And it actually grows from the head itself, so hair tends to take some cue from the shape of the head. It doesn't not hover and choose its own direction. My personal recommendation to the producers of Zorro: next time, get Tina Turner as an executive consultant in the wig department. Whatever you might think of the hairstyles Tina has chosen during the course of her career, you cannot deny that all of them look like they belong on her crazy head. And she makes them herself, so how could you not like that?