Shaking and shimmying with electric energy, the new Hairspray is a musical delight
Movie Review
Hairspray Directed by Adam Shankman
To answer your first question: He looks like Barney. A huge,
flesh-colored Barney. Or maybe like Barbra Streisand after a Botox
overdose. Actually, there are times in Hairspray when John Travolta seems on
the verge of being eaten by his fat suit, so swaddled is the actor in padding,
hair, makeup, and structural engineering. I haven’t even mentioned the
exceedingly strange accent in which he delivers his lines: Carol Channing by way
of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel.
And yet — Edna Turnblad lives. The dumpy shut-in, laundress, and mother
to irrepressible teen dynamo Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) becomes as much a
full-figured character as a full-figured gal in this supremely energetic
Broadway transplant. Against all expectations, Hairspray turns out to be an
explosion of industrial-strength good cheer, delivered by very smart showbiz
pros with wit, passion, and a soupáon of dementia. Resistance is futile.
Let’s backtrack. In 1988, cult-movie director John Waters directed the
original Hairspray, a sneakily subversive blast of early-’60s nostalgia about TV
dance shows and rock ’n’ roll integration. It starred the filmmaker’s 300-lb.
drag muse Divine as Edna, a newcomer named Ricki Lake as Tracy, and if you’ve
never seen it, get it on your Netflix queue immediately. The "Madison Time"
scene alone can change your life.
In 2002, Hairspray landed on Broadway, transformed into a big but still
reasonably perverse musical. It won eight Tonys, assuring a trip back to
celluloid. Correct me if I’m wrong, but only The Producers has followed the same
movie-to-musical-to-movie path, and that one was a high-spirited embalming.
Not this time. From the very first number, in which Blonsky belts out
"Good Morning Baltimore" over the sleazy sights, sounds, and smells of her city,
the film clears the launch pad and soars into orbit. Adapted by the reliable
screenwriter Leslie Dixon and directed by former choreographer Adam Shankman (he
made alleged comedies like The Pacifier and Bringing Down the House, but we’ll
overlook that for now), Hairspray is once again a movie.
If you look fast, you’ll see Waters himself in a cameo (as a flasher; what
else?), proof the new film is in touch with its dyed roots. Further evidence is
in the casting, which includes Christopher Walken as father Wilbur Turnblad,
proprietor of the Hardy-Har Hut joke shop above which his family lives; Michelle
Pfeiffer as Velma Von Tussle, evil TV station manager and mother of Tracy’s teen
rival, Amber (Brittany Snow ); Queen Latifah as record-store owner Motormouth
Maybelle, almost emerging from the shadow of the late Ruth Brown in the original
film.
Even the younger roles have been cast with an acerbic grin, from Amanda
Bynes as Tracy’s BFF, Penny Pingleton (what she does to a lollipop could violate
the Mann Act), to High School Musical dreamboat Zac Efron as Link Larkin, teen
idol of The Corny Collins Show. Whether he’s acting or not, Efron’s as adorably
dull as Michael St. Gerard was in 1988. They’re both baby Elvii and the hottest
things in 1962 Baltimore.
Hairspray remains a story of social outsiders cheerfully bashing their way
into the spotlight. If Blonsky’s Tracy demands to know why a "pleasingly plump"
teenage girl with ultra-high hair can’t do the Monkey on local afternoon TV —
and get the guy in the bargain — her war is waged with swing and a smile.
(Until that unfortunate assault charge, at least.)
Singing "Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now," Tracy scales the battlements of
uptight Baltimore and drags black kids like Seaweed Stubbs (a terrifically
limber and engaging Elijah Kelley) and his sister Little Inez (Taylor Parks) in
her wake, trying to finish what Elvis started by getting them on TV to dance to
their own music. Unlike the Waters movie, she steps aside at a crucial point and
lets them lead the charge on their own. In general, thisHairspray has a winking
awareness of the way the white mainstream strip-mines African-American culture
that just barely saves the movie from smugness. (Or as Tracy says, "Being
invited places by black people — it’s so hip!")
I do miss the R&B chestnuts of the first Hairspray, but the Broadway songs
are tremendous, cross-pollinating doo-wop, soul music, and Lesley Gore with arch
comic irony. When Corny Collins (James Marsden of the X-Men movies, all
Brylcreem and teeth) introduces his show with the energetic dance number "The
Nicest Kids in Town," the compliment carries a social and racial sting. But it’s
got a good beat and you can dance to it.
The real secret weapon here may be composer Marc Shaiman, who wrote the
tunes and, with Scott Wittman, the lyrics for the Broadway show. Shaiman’s the
mad doctor who gave us the musical numbers in South Park: Bigger, Longer, and
Uncut and he’s a master of slick, propulsively funny pastiche.
Still, Broadway addicts will mourn the disappearance of a handful of songs
as Hairspray expands to fill the dimensions of a movie screen. The energy comes
more from the performances and score than the filmmaking, but Shankman directs
ably, and he even pulls the camera back to take in large-scale dance numbers
instead of cutting feverishly among the body parts as Chicago and other modern
screen musicals do. Of the new breed of Tony-winning transfers, Hairspray makes
the leap most confidently. (But what’s the competition? Rent? Phantom??)
Blonsky even outshines Lake (who turns up here in a cameo), partially
because Tracy’s confidence can now take flight in song as well as dance.
Pfeiffer restarts her career with a bang after five years offscreen, turning
Velma into a tight-lipped vamp quivering with racist politesse. That said, the
scene I’ll pack away in my movie-memento scrapbook doesn’t involve either
actress. It’s the backyard "[You’re] Timeless to Me" number, in which Travolta’s
Edna, as balletic as the hippo in Fantasia, trips the light fantastic with her
husband.
If you haven’t seen 1981’s Pennies From Heaven lately, maybe you’ve
forgotten that Walken’s a song-and-dance man. Here he and his cross-dressing
co-star pirouette up and down the fire escape and around the clothesline,
segueing into a Latin dance number that briefly raises the specter of Saturday
Night Fever. It’s a lovely scene, suffused with a grace that comes from our
longstanding affection for both actors. It also marks the line where Hairspray
stops short, because the sequence builds to a kiss that just isn’t allowed to
happen.
A minor hiccup, maybe, but it makes you realize how much
trans-gressiveness has been purged from this project. Divine was patently a gay
man in a cheap housedress (so was Harvey Fierstein onstage); by contrast,
Travolta plays Edna blissfully straight. A kiss would break that illusion and
take the character out of the closet, and this movie’s not going to risk that.
Seaweed and Penny Pingleton do share a juicy interracial smooch — hot
enough to discomfit all the right people — but Hairspray is still overly
nervous about the love between a man and his wife who’s actually another man in
75 pounds of foam and enough foundation to spackle the USS Constitution. Maybe
I’m carping: The movie’s tremendous fun. And maybe we’re not as far from 1962 as
we think. — Nielsen Entertainment News Wire
Send story
Print story