Musical ‘Hairspray’ is impossible to resist
Published 2:52 pm Thursday, July 19, 2007
In retrospect, John Waters’ 1988 movie “Hairspray” was a natural for the musical-comedy treatment. The story revolved around a teen dance TV show in 1962, and it already had the kooky spirit of “Bye Bye Birdie.”
And so, with songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, “Hairspray” became a Broadway hit in 2002. Waters, the onetime underground “Pope of Trash,” had gotten respectable.
We come full circle with the movie adaptation of the Broadway adaptation of “Hairspray.” The transition is as smooth as a lacquered bouffant.
The story revolves around Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky), a pudgy Baltimore teen who becomes the unlikely new star of “The Corny Collins Show,” a live Baltimore variation on “American Bandstand.”
Even more unlikely, Tracy’s stardom kick-starts the local civil rights movement. Can black teens, heretofore relegated to “Negro Day” on Corny’s show, be integrated into the all-white cast?
The movie radiates good cheer, and its message that being “different” is cool is giddily repeated throughout. The songs are generic, but they’re aping the early-’60s sound anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
For a villain, the film has the TV station’s program director (an eye-rolling Michelle Pfeiffer), who tries to sabotage Tracy for the benefit of her own creepy-perfect daughter (Brittany Snow).
It’s a tradition for Tracy’s hefty mother, Edna, to be played by a man in drag. In the original film this was Divine, in the stage show Harvey Fierstein. Here the padding goes to John Travolta, who’s game and silly in the role. Travolta could’ve gone even broader – this is not a part that requires subtlety.
The wackiest and sweetest number is delivered by Travolta and Christopher Walken, as Tracy’s daffy dad. Their dance together amongst the backyard clotheslines is the stuff of legend, or at least endless film clips.
Young Nikki Blonsky is engaging, if not quite the dynamo Ricki Lake was in the first film. Amanda Bynes is fun as Tracy’s pal, Zac Efron is fitting as Tracy’s dreamboat, and James Marsden (from the “X-Men” movies) is right in tune as Corny Collins. Queen Latifah belts out a couple of numbers, and Elijah Kelly is agile as a detention kid who teaches Tracy some new, hot dance moves.
The occasionally seamy tone of Waters’ original is scrubbed clean here, and the movie is best when it’s singing and dancing. Waters didn’t direct this time out – choreographer Adam Shankman, who directed “Bringing Down the House,” did the helming. But rest assured that Waters has a very appropriate cameo in the opening five minutes.
Cuts from the Broadway show wisely bring the movie in under two hours; any longer and the lightweight material might deflate. I miss the beatniks from the Waters movie (remember Pia Zadora?), but otherwise this one’s hard to resist.
ABOVE: John Travolta and Queen Latifah in “Hairspray.”
FAR LEFT: Michelle Pfeiffer
LEFT: Christopher Walken
