'White Hot' review: 'Abercrombie & Fitch' doc lacks depth

WHAT IT'S ABOUT The documentary "White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch" tells the story of the heyday of the clothing brand with a focus on how it targeted and built its preppy, upper middle class customer base.

Now streaming on Netflix, it chronicles the handiwork of former CEO Mike Jeffries, who transformed what was once an outdoorsman company dating to the 19th century into a shrine to a particular form of white elitism.

Directed by Alison Klayman ("Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry"), the movie spends considerable time on Abercrombie's troubling history.

It chronicles allegations of discriminatory practices against people of color, including the Supreme Court case won by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2015 on behalf of Samantha Elauf, a Muslim American woman who was not hired at an Abercrombie store because she wore a hijab.

MY SAY The thesis behind "White Hot" stands up to scrutiny and warrants a documentary treatment.

Abercrombie & Fitch played an outsized role in promoting a narrow and toxic vision of "All-American" beauty ideals when its popularity reached its height during the '90s and '00s.

For a time, particularly when the shopping mall still served as a locus for American culture, Abercrombie was both powerful and pervasive. It's worth taking a moment to consider what that meant.

But you won't find it explored with any real depth in this run-of-the-mill and tepid documentary.

Anyone who spent a millisecond in one of the stores or laid eyes on the once ubiquitous advertisements with mostly naked models sporting chiseled abs will have already processed the key point here, as articulated by an interview subject: that the brand wasn't really selling clothing at all, but an exclusionary lifestyle.

The promise of behind-the-scenes revelations is not fulfilled: it's not exactly stunning news that some employees partied a lot and drank "two Irish Car Bombs every night."

The documentary's overarching flatness extends to the visual style.

While the filmmaker is hamstrung by a relative lack of file footage and the refusal of key figures like Jeffries to participate, there's no way to avoid being let down by just how pedestrian it all looks, with an emphasis on talking-head interview subjects sitting in chairs and scrapbook-style animation.

The picture flicks at more interesting currents, both in terms of considering the homoerotic underpinnings of the brand's imaging and the ways in which its recipe of "heritage + elitism + sex," as it's described in the movie, purposefully left out so many.

But the need to rush through the entire chronology in just under an hour-and-a-half means that "White Hot" simply jumps from one theme to another, without having the time to get at why this is worth revisiting now.

BOTTOM LINE Only people with a serious interest in the recent history of Abercrombie & Fitch, or mall retail in general, should bother with this movie.