As a life-long fan of John Waters & his movies, I have been looking forward to this movie with some trepidation. The original Hairspray was Waters's first PG-rated movie back in 1988 (most of his earlier movies were rated X for sheer depravity) and was a comedy of considerable charm about the attempted integration of a rock & roll dance show in Baltimore. It was later turned into a smash Broadway musical, and the new movie is the filmed version of that.
The original starred Ricki Lake as a fat girl with great dance moves who wants to get onto the show. Her mother was played by the great Divine (in his last screen role), Waters's main star, a 300lb man who was very convincing playing a woman. (I'll correct a common misconception here: Divine was gay, but he wasn't actually a transvestite off-screen.) Both stars were superb - it make Ricki a star, and it would surely have made Divine a star if he hadn't died a few days after the premiere.
The remake is not as good as the original, but it is highly entertaining and distinct enough that it is worth seeing in its own right. The filmmakers are smart enough not to try and mimic the original's style; the first was pure Waters, while the remake is pure Broadway.
It was interesting to compare John Travolta's performance to Divine's original; Divine played Edna Turnblad as a sassy chick who's embarrassed by her weight, while Travolta plays her as a shy wallflower coming out of her shell. In balance I preferred Divine, but at least he was in his own skin while Travolta had a fat suit to contend with.
Christopher Walken is smashing as Wilbur Turnblad, maybe even better than Jerry Stiller in the original. (Stiller gets another great role here, as the manager of a fat chick clothing shop.) He has genuine chemistry with Travolta, and their big romantic fantasy song & dance number was probably my favourite scene in the movie.
Michelle Pfeiffer (obviously having the time of her life) is also great as Velma van Tussle. Drawn, thin, bitchy, and blatantly racist, she makes a great villain. Her character is actually a conflation of Deborah Harry & Sonny Bono's roles in the original (they apparently decided that no one could possibly replace Sonny).
Newcomer Nikki Blonsky carries the lead role of Tracy Turnblad with aplomb. She's got charm and style and a great singing voice, though I have to say that Ricki Lake was a better dancer.
Sadly, most of the supporting cast is less memorable than their counterparts in the original. It's a lot harder to see why Tracy is so bowled over by Link this time, Amber van Tussle is nowhere near evil enough, and Queen Latifah just does not have the oomph of Ruth Brown as Motormouth Maybelle.
I was totally in love with Lesley Ann Powers as Penny Pingleton in the original (sadly it was her only screen role), but her replacement made no impression on me. Her mother, while fun, was not as vicious or as stupid this time around.
That's really my biggest problem with the movie: apart from Pfeiffer: the villains aren't as nasty or as openly racist as in the original, and the movie suffers from it.
The story is noticeably simplified and toned down from Waters's original, which sadly means that most of my favourite scenes are either not as good (the race riot) or completely absent (e.g. the Beatniks, the hypnotist, the concert, Penny's mother's racist freak-out).
I was also a bit disappointed in the staging of the dance sequences. Some of them were fantastic, but too often the camera did not film the dancers to their greatest effect, and some of the dance sequences should have been better rehearsed (or maybe had better dancers). Director/choreographer Adam Shankman is clearly to blame here - he previously choreographed the Buffy musical episode, which was fun but not exactly Gene Kelly. This is a common complaint of mine in recent times (see also the vastly over-rated Chicago) - I think great Hollywood musicals are a lost art, which saddens me.
Unsurprisingly, the black kids were much better dancers than the white kids. The guy who played Seaweed was particularly amazing.
No blame on Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman's songs, which are great fun. Shaiman, of course, had previously worked on the unstoppably catchy songs for the South Park movie, and he maybe even tops that here. As with almost all musical music I doubt I'd like it out of context, but in the movie it's awesome.
Kudos also for keeping the grotty, rat-infested look of Baltimore that's so familiar from Waters's movies (and also from Berry Levinson's movies).
I note with amusement that the original cost $2 million and the remake cost $75 million. I'm not entirely sure where all that money went, but this is a fun movie that deserved to be a hit, and quite frankly the world cannot have enough light & fluffy musicals about racism.
Posted by pearce at September 14, 2007 10:39 AM