I've been hearing a lot about Hairspray over the last couple
years thanks to the enthusiasm of my young cousins, who were such fans
of the show that they went to see it on Broadway. Aside from hearing the
effervescent opening number, Good Morning, Baltimore - a grand
hello to a bustling city that reminds me a lot of our beautifully
boisterous introduction to Belle and her little town in Beauty and the Beast - on late-night and early-morning television, in the Macy's Parade and on Ugly Betty,
I was pretty unfamiliar with the play, but all the buzz about it was
enough to get me pretty pumped up for the movie when I heard that
director Adam Shankman would be bringing it to the big screen.
Yesterday, my parents, my friend Libbie and I decided to see for
ourselves what all the hype was about. What we got was a joyous
kaleidoscope of slightly over-the-top early-sixties eye candy, with the
darker edges of that era bubbling beneath the surface until they are
brought into the full light of scrutiny when Queen Latifah's matronly Motormouth Maybelle leads a soulful march protesting the segregationist policies of The Corny Collins Show, the American Bandstand-esque
television program that turns Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky), a
starry-eyed teen with a heart as oversized as her pudgy frame, into an
overnight sensation.
Blonsky is absolutely infectious in the
lead role. The girl is a ray of sunshine, undeterred by all the
obstacles that stand in the way of her dream of dancing on her favorite
TV show, while also unwilling to compromise her principles for the sake
of her ambition. As the film progresses, she becomes acutely aware of
how the black students from whom she learns her best dance moves are
oppressed, and she yearns to create an environment in which race need no
longer be a barrier to opportunities. Just as she has broken down
conventional societal expectations of beauty, she strives to show
everyone that integration is the wave of the future.
Along the
way, she dances her heart out and takes a few time-outs to sigh
dreamily over Ricky Nelson-esque Link Larkin (Zac Efron), who gradually
comes to see Tracy as a young woman of such substance that she
overshadows his perfectly coiffed girlfriend Amber Von Tussle (Brittany
Snow), whose conniving mother (Michelle Pfeiffer), the manager of the
station on which the dance show airs, undermines the new girl every step
of the way despite opposition from host Corny (James Marsden), whose
dazzling smile gleams all the brighter whenever Tracy takes to the
stage.
Her best friend Penny Pingleton (Amanda Bynes), a wisp
of a girl with an omnipresent lollipop, ducks out from under the icy
repression of her puritanical mother Prudy (Allison Janney) when she
falls head over heels for Maybelle's exuberant son Seaweed (Elijah
Kelley). Tracy, meanwhile, aims to bring her mother Edna (John
Travolta), a frumpy laundress whose crippling self-image has long led
her to eschew the outside world, into contemporary society. She's not an
unreasonable woman; she's just insecure and set in her ways, and with a
little nudging she is ready to support her daughter in her endeavors,
though perhaps not as whole-heartedly as Tracy's gentle, eccentric
father Wilbur (Christopher Walken),
who achieved his own long-held goal when he opened a novelty shop,
which enjoys an upsurge in business in the wake of Tracy's newfound
celebrity.
Much was made of Travolta's gender-bending
performance here, and he certainly immersed himself in the part, though I
was never quite able to forget that she was actually a he, and neither
was the rest of the audience, judging by the nervous titters that
rippled whenever Walken edged in for a kiss. After his over-the-top
performance in High School Musical,
I wasn't sure what I would think of Efron, but he was much more nuanced
here, even though he was in a similar role as a dreamboat who is
startled into self-awareness by the arrival of an unconventional gal. I
didn't think there was a weak link in the cast, and I give special kudos
to Janney for making such a simultaneously humorous and terrifying
impression in her brief appearances.
As someone with limited
familiarity with the songs in this film, I was impressed by their energy
and complexity. The lyrics in particular are very clever, perfectly
capturing the various speech patterns of characters and often riddled
with sly innuendoes that indicate this was not such an innocent time
after all. Most of these are subtle enough that they would probably go
right over the heads of youngsters, and there's little else in the movie
that could be considered objectionable. Indeed, Hairspray is an
ideal film for the family to see together, as the bouncy dance numbers
and likable characters reel audiences in for a poignant lesson in the
importance of accepting other people's differences. Don't miss out!
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