Hairspray Exuberantly Examines the Notion of Otherness

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!

High School Musical Has Made-for-TV Written All Over It

Recently, a high school in my area launched a production of High School Musical based on the popular made-for-TV Disney movie. Mom and I had both heard of the film before, but reading the article about the play was enough to compel us to check out the movie. After two video stores failed to have it in stock, we found success with my 9- and 11-year-old cousins, who own the movie and were happy to lend it. I appreciate their generosity. But maybe the universe was trying to tell us something when we came home from the video stores empty handed.

From the moment High School Musical begins, it feels like it was made for television. Somehow I thought this one might be a cut above the average, but in fact it smacks of all the corniness inherent in most Tween-centered Disney shows these days. We meet our two young stars at a New Year's Eve party at a lodge, where both are on vacation with their families. Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) is a talented basketball player, as he pretty much has to be since his dad (Bart Johnson) is not only a former champion but his coach. Bookish Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Anne Hudgens) is used to sitting on the sidelines, except when she's taking part in academic competitions. But when the DJ in charge of karaoke at the party forces the two onstage for an impromptu performance, they both discover untapped talent... and each other. It's the last day of vacation, so they don't expect to see each other again any time soon, but then of all the high schools in all the cities in all the country, Gabriella has to walk into his.

Conveniently, her family has just moved into Troy's town, so massive coincidence places her and Troy in close proximity to one another once again, this time for keeps. And with their newfound singing abilities, not to mention a desire to spend as much time together as possible, the lovebirds defy convention and audition for the "winter musicale," which will be under the direction of loopy acting teacher Ms Darbus (Alyson Reed), dodging all sorts of obstacles along the way. Troy faces pressure not only from his dad but from his whole team, particularly his best friend Chad (Corbin Bleu), to "keep his head in the game"; after scheming drama queen Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) circulates news of the new girl's past intellectual victories, the brainiacs play into her hand and nab Gabriella for the Scholastic Decathlon. Throw in their own insecurities about trying something completely different, and they have a lot working against them.

Kind of like this movie has a lot working against it, but while Troy and Gabriella are fated to overcome their obstacles to not only nab the lead roles in the play but become schoolwide heroes in the process (come on, you knew that was coming), High School Musical never quite rises above the schlock to become something greater. I confess I'm baffled by the popularity this movie has enjoyed. While its main characters are likable enough and the songs are reasonably catchy, every single performance is laughably over-the-top, and the film relies heavily upon the very stereotypes it seems to be trying to break.

None of the acting impressed me very much, as all of the cast members seem to lean upon exaggerated expressions and whatever high school cliches best fit them. Especially onerous are Tisdale, who smirks her way through the movie with a hearty measure of rolled eyes, hair flips and simpers thrown in, and Reed, who delivers amusement but takes her character's eccentric pomposity to a scarcely tolerable level. Of course, she is given some of the most ridiculous dialogue in the movie to work with; while I've known people like Ms Darbus, it seems the writers were striving to make her unbelievable, as when, on two occasions, Troy and Gabriella show up two seconds after she has called for the next auditioners and she protests heavily that the opportunity has passed, or when she sternly tells a basketball-toting Chad that her homeroom is not a hockey rink. Sharpay easily manipulates her into rescheduling the call-backs so that they're the same time as the basketball championship and the academic competition; what's the point of having call-backs at all if the only challengers to the long-running leads (Sharpay and her brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel), which seems a bit odd considering that most shows with a lead male and female role revolve around a romantic relationship) are unavailable to try out? Perhaps the point we're supposed to take from this is that Ms Darbus is stuck in a rut just like her pupils and doesn't particularly want to risk messing things up by casting newbies in her show, but the plot contrivances just seem a little too frequent and glaring for my liking.

Just as shaky as the writing and the acting are the musical sequences. Sure, these kids have pretty decent voices, but each of the songs looks unforgivably phony. There's nothing natural about the way they are singing; Gabriella may be casually walking down the hall, and Troy may be dribbling a basketball, but they both sound like they're in a recording studio, and we never forget for a moment that the actors are lip-synching. It's From Justin to Kelly all over again, from the overblown choreography and cheesy lyrics to the determination of conniving friends to nip an unlikely romance in the bud. It's also Mean Girls, as the students so rigidly divided into distinct cliques begin to come together, discovering that you can be both an athlete and a baker, a geek and a hip-hop enthusiast. That's a message worth imparting, but it comes in such heavy-handed trappings that even a cornball like me can't choke it down. I'm glad that millions of pre-teens have gotten such a kick out of this little flick, but as for me, I've seen dozens of high school musicals right here in my own hometown that have impressed me more.