Hairspray is all calories and fizz -- a super-sized pleasure and the summer's pluckiest surprise.
Don't get me wrong. Watching actors spontaneously erupt into song usually makes me bolt for the bathroom like Nicole Richie after an all-you-can-eat buffet.
But from the sly, satiric opening sequence to the buttons-bursting finale, this is a rollicking roly-poly high point for the modern movie musical.
Based on the Broadway adaptation of John Waters' 1988 film, it's more electrifying than Dreamgirls, more entertaining than Chicago -- without the pretentiousness of either.
You may not skip out of the theatre singing, but you'll leave wearing a big, dopey grin -- and when was the last time you said that? It's also a perfectly-timed, rousing remedy to a moviegoing season overstuffed with soulless CG bombast. Instead, the special effects here are refreshingly human -- namely, a cast headed by newcomer Nikki Blonsky that includes Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer, Queen Latifah, James Marsden, Brittany Snow, Amanda Bynes and, in drag, John Travolta.
Curiously, the Grease and Saturday Night Fever icon -- looking like a cross between Jabba The Hutt and Annette Funicello -- underplays his role of Edna Turnblad, a 1962 Baltimore housewife whose teenage daughter Tracy (Blonsky) improbably becomes the break-out star of a local dance party The Corky Collins Show.
It's an odd acting miscalculation considering the high camp quotient, but Travolta, sequestered behind his fat suit and mounds of make-up, clearly intends for Edna to register as more than a mere stunt. He's only partially successful. Not that it matters. Nor is he alone. If anything, the cast's venerable veterans (Pfeiffer, Walken, Latifah) are upstaged by their energized juniors -- whether it's Blonsky belting out sunny period-pop tunes or Bynes, Snow, Elijah Kelley and Zac Efron providing able, comedic support.
Granted, even as the narrative flirts with such heady issues as discrimination and social acceptance for all (regardless of race or the size of your waist) Hairspray is never more profound than a Slurpee. But it's also a cross-gender, cross-dressing crowd-pleaser that's too well-executed to dismiss, too infectious to ignore.
(This film is rated PG)
More Movie Reviews
