Hairspray puzzles me. Why remake a movie like this? Why randomly keep some elements of John Water’s 1988 version and jettison the ones that actually develop the plot? I really don’t understand this Hollywood trend of taking a good movie converting it into a musical and then turning the musical back into a movie? Is there an example of this working out, ever?
This is the basic plot of the movie: Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) wants to become popular in high school by dancing on the Corny Collins Show, a local version of American Bandstand. But because Tracy is overweight and unpopular, the student council rejects her. Tracy gets thrown into detention, where all the black students are dancing. They teach her how to dance better. She gets on the show, but gets into trouble when she tries to promote racial integration. She then decides to work to get both black and white kids dancing on the stage at the same time.
John Travolta puts in a drag performance as Tracy’s mother Edna. Why? Because in the original movie, John Water’s favorite transvestite, Divine, played the role. So when it was turned into a stage musical, Harvey Fierstein played that role. Apparently the director thought that it had to be played in drag. But there is nothing clear in the movie why you would make that casting decision. As for his acting, this is one of Travolta’s worst performances. He came up with an accent that has never seen the light of day within a hundred miles of the city. He chews his way through every scene like it is an extremely fatty ham.
Christopher Walken manages to put in a fairly decent performance, despite weak material. He tries to add depth to his role as Tracy’s caring but but somewhat clueless father.
Michelle Pfieffer does a good job as the evil, racist, overbearing mom who is also the station manager that keeps her daughter on the top of the show.
As for the rest of the cast, (Zac Efron, Brittany Snow, James Marsden and Queen Latifah) they just walk through their cardboard roles without trying to inject any kind of life into them at all. Queen Latifah does manage to get one line of her leaden dialogue delivered as a laugh, but it is such a rarity that it sit there out of place.
The music and dance scenes of this movie are the most disappointing elements. The strange but authentic early 60s one hit wonders that filled the original film were ditched for generic songs that could have been pulled from or dropped into any mediocre musical of the past 20 years. As for the dancing, I was hopeful that since the director was also the choreographer the dancing would be a highlight. Sadly, that never comes to pass. The dancing is almost treated in a second hand fashion.
The movie also goes pretty far in sanitizing itself and removes all of the subversive elements that made the original so quirky and interesting. The beatniks who give Tracy her sense of style and second hand hits of pot are gone. All the hints that Mr. Pinky, the dressmaker, was a chubby chaser are ditched. The dance off featuring Tracy in a dress covered in fabric cockroaches is also missing.
Did anybody really need a movie in 2007 to say that racism is wrong?