Hairspray
Director: Adam Shankman. Screenplay: Leslie Dixon, based on the 1988 screenplay by John Waters and the stage musical by Mark O’Donnell. Cinematography: Bojan Bazelli. Film editing: Michael Tronick. Production design: David Gropman. Music: Marc Shaiman. Producers: Neil Meron, Craig Zadan. With: Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, Amanda Bynes, Elijah Kelley, Paul Dooley, Allison Janney, Brittany Snow, Zac Efron, Jerry Stiller, Taylor Parks, Darren Frost. USA. 115 min. 2007.
As unlikely as it may have seemed when John Waters released the original version, surprising moviegoers with his first sort-of-mainstream picture, Hairspray has become a franchise, spawning a popular stage musical and now a cinematic adaptation of same. Stranger still, the toe-tapping remake is more memorable than its 1988 predecessor, thanks to its infectiously high spirits and a rousing collection of energy-filled performances.
Set in Baltimore during the early 1960s, when racial bigotry reigned even more than it does today, the good-hearted story centers on a big-haired teenager named Tracy who--aided by sensational steps she’s learned from an African-American friend--achieves her dream of getting onto a TV dance program despite her tubbiness, and ends up integrating the show despite opposition from a bigoted channel boss. The movie amounts to a cheerful argument that difference, eccentricity, and so-called freakishness are society’s greatest assets; practicing what it preaches, the film surrounds its pleasingly plump star, Nikki Blonsky, with a diversified cast including John Travolta as Tracy’s rotund mom, Christopher Walken as her high-stepping dad, Amanda Bynes as her eye-rolling best friend, Elijah Kelley as her terpsichorean mentor, and Queen Latifah as a dignified diva of the dance floor. Plus the inimitable Waters in a perfectly executed cameo as a dirty old man in a raincoat. Nearly all the actors are ideal for the characters they portray, looking like affectionate caricatures as they croon and kick their way through the best old-fashioned movie musical in years.
When he launched his career in the late '60s and early '70s with Pink Flamingos and other infamous fare, Waters was a dirty young man determined to wake and shake the movie world out of its lazy prudishness. Today he’s not so young and not so dirty; in his hometown of Baltimore, where your humble reviewer lives and works, he’s become a favorite son, honored and celebrated as if his career hasn’t been a (mostly) nonstop salute to all that’s debauched, disreputable, and decadent in the raging American id. Although he didn’t write or direct the Hairspray remake, he’s unquestionably the originator, auteur, and presiding spirit of the production. Few would have expected it 40 years ago, but this proudly anarchic artist has become a respected icon of the very culture he once set out to scandalize.
– David Sterritt
