Reviewed by Neil Davey
Stars John Travolta, Nikki Blonsky, Amanda Bynes, Christopher Walken, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley,
Queen Latifah, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brittany Snow,
James Marsden, Allison Janney, Jerry Stiller
Written by Leslie Dixon & John Waters
Certification UK PG | US PG
Runtime 117 minutes
Directed by Adam Shankman
Despite one of the more bizarre heritages of recent movies — it’s a film based on a musical based on a film — Hairspray defies logic to be one of the best films of the year to date. Well, if not one of the best, certainly the most enjoyable and, in this critic’s humble opinion, making you want to dance out of the cinema and leaving you beaming for two days is as deserving of five stars as anything these days.
It also deserves full marks for taking a subversive original — John Waters’ typically askew moral lesson on acceptance — adding deliciously witty songs (both from the stage adaptation and some new material), tweaking a few pot points yet maintaining a deeply political air below all the joyous, unnatural fibre surface gloss. Like Martin Luther King, Tracy Turnblad (Blonsky) has a dream. Unlike Martin Luther King though, her dream is a little more straightforward — though possibly just as difficult to achieve. Tracy wants to dance on Baltimore’s hippest TV programme, The Corny Collins Show. Tracy is just as talented and just as perky as the ‘nicest kids on town’ who currently mash potato and watusi on the box and has more personality than several of them combined. The problem is that she’s the size of several of them combined. Her even larger mother Edna (Travolta) is deeply protective and thinks that Tracy should just give up the dream but dad Wilbur (Walken) disagrees: ‘You’ve got to think big to be big’ he advises, and Tracy goes for it.
Despite failing her audition — thanks to the bitchiness of fellow dancer and reigning Miss Teenage Hairspray Amber (Snow) and her mother, the show’s scheming producer Velma (Pfeiffer) — Tracy gets a second shot at the school hop. Corny sees her, loves her and Tracy’s on the show. But things aren’t right, as Tracy soon discovers. The black kids are being kept down, their monthly show is being scrapped and things have got to change. Tracy has another dream and this time she is like Martin Luther King. Tracy is on a quest for integration, first on the show and then across Baltimore… You can, of course, argue that the obvious parallel here — fat kid understands the black kids because they’re all outsiders from this calorie-controlled WASP world — is patronising, and maybe it is. But Adam Shankman’s colourful film still manages to swing some powerful political lead while entertaining and satirising the WASP society so effectively. There are balls of steel beneath the pastiche, and the points made score more effectively than a year’s worth of more politically-correct films.
Shankman – a choreographer turned director – clearly understands the musical genre and, unlike the appalling Chicago, lets the dancing be seen. That he also understands Waters’ point — and gives Waters, plus previous star Ricki Lake, cameos — shows there’s more to the man than his previous movies (‘classics’ such as The Pacifier) might have suggested. The whole thing is just a delight, mixing pointed gags with affectionate pastiche and some quite glorious dancing, particlarly from Elijah Kelley as Seaweed. Even the casting of John Travolta transcends its novelty value. When Edna and Wilbur sing a sweet song about growing old together, it’s probably the most romantic scene of the year. And then you remember it’s being played out between Christopher Walken and John Travolta in a fat suit and in drag. Brilliant.