|
The New York Times
Movie Review | 'Hairspray'
Teenagers in Love and
a Mom in Drag in the '60s
 |
|
David James/New Line Cinema
Christopher Walken, left, as Wilbur Turnblad, husband of Edna (John
Travolta), shares a moment with his screen spouse in “Hairspray,”
the film version of the Broadway musical, itself adapted from the
1988 John Waters film. |
By A. O. SCOTT ,
nytimes.com Movie Review on the Web, July 19, 2007
That “Hairspray” is good-hearted is
no surprise. Adam Shankman’s film, lovingly adapted from the Broadway
musical, preserves the inclusive, celebratory spirit of John Waters’s 1988
movie, in which bigger-boned, darker-skinned and otherwise different folk take
exuberant revenge on the bigots and the squares who conspire to keep them down.
The surprise may be that this “Hairspray,” stuffed with shiny showstoppers,
Kennedy-era Baltimore beehives and a heavily padded John Travolta in drag, is
actually good.
Appropriately enough for a movie with such a democratic sensibility, there is
plenty of credit to go around. Mr. Shankman, drawing on long experience as
a choreographer, avoids the kind of vulgar overstatement that so often turns the
joy of live musical theater into torment at the multiplex. The songs, by
Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, are usually adequate, occasionally inspired and
only rarely inane. And they are sung with impeccable diction and
unimpeachable conviction by a lively young cast that includes Nikki Blonsky,
Amanda Bynes, Zac Efron and the phenomenally talented Elijah Kelley.
Of course there are better-known, more-seasoned performers on hand as well,
notably Queen Latifah, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken and Mr. Travolta.
But “Hairspray” is fundamentally a story about being young — about the triumph
of youth culture, about the optimistic, possibly dated belief that the future
will improve on the present — and its heart is very much with its teenage heroes
and the fresh-faced actors who play them.
Ms. Blonsky, a ball of happy, mischievous energy, is Tracy Turnblad, a hefty
Baltimore high school student whose dream is to dance with the city’s most
telegenic teeny-boppers on “The Corny Collins Show.” Ms. Bynes plays Penny
Pingleton, Tracy’s timid best friend, whose prim mother (Allison Janney) won’t
even let Penny watch the show, much less appear on it. Mrs. Pingleton can
scarcely imagine that her daughter will eventually fall for Seaweed (Mr.
Kelley), part of a group of black kids whom Tracy befriends in the detention
hall after school.
As Penny and Seaweed test the taboo against interracial romance, Tracy and Link
Larkin (Mr. Efron), a “Corny Collins” dreamboat, take on the tyranny of
slenderness. That “Hairspray” cheerfully conflates racial prejudice with
fat-phobia is the measure of its guileless, deliberately simplified politics.
Upholding both forms of discrimination is Velma Von Tussle (Ms. Pfeiffer), a
television station executive who uses “The Corny Collins Show” — against the
wishes of Corny (James Marsden) himself — as a way of maintaining the color line
and promoting the celebrity of her blond, smiley daughter, Amber (Brittany
Snow).
“Hairspray” does not seriously propose that Tracy and her new African-American
friends face equivalent forms of injustice. But it does make the
solidarity between them feel like an utterly natural, intuitive response to the
meanness and arrogance of their common enemies. “Welcome to the ’60s,”
Tracy sings to her mother, conjuring up the New Frontier hopefulness of that
decade’s early years rather than the violence and paranoia of its denouement.
In freezing history at a moment of high possibility — a moment whose glorious
popular culture encompasses “West Side Story” and the Twist, early Motown and
Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound — “Hairspray” is at once knowingly corny and
unabashedly utopian. On “The Corny Collins Show” Seaweed and his friends
are relegated to a once-a-month Negro Day, presided over by Motormouth Maybelle
(Queen Latifah). Tracy envisions a future when, as she puts it, “every day
is Negro Day.”
What is missing from “Hairspray” is anything beyond the faintest whisper of
camp. The original “Hairspray” may have been Mr. Waters’s most wholesome,
least naughty film, but there was no containing the volcanic audacity of Divine,
who created the role of Edna Turnblad. Divine, who was born Harris Glen
Milstead and who died shortly after the first “Hairspray” was released, belonged
to an era when drag performance still carried more than a touch of the louche
and the dangerous, and was one of the artists who helped push it into the
cultural mainstream.
Perhaps wisely Mr. Travolta does not try to duplicate the outsize, deliberately
grotesque theatricality of Divine’s performance or to mimic the Mermanesque
extravagance of Harvey Fierstein’s Broadway turn, choosing instead to tackle the
role of Edna as an acting challenge. The odd result is that she becomes
the most realistic, least stereotypical character in the film, and the only one
who speaks in a recognizable (if not always convincing) Baltimore accent.
(“Ahm tryna orn,” she complains when she’s trying to iron.)
A shy, unsophisticated, working-class woman, Edna is ashamed of her physical
size even as she seems to hide inside it, as if seeking protection from the
noise and indignity of the world outside. It is Tracy who pulls her out of
her shell, and without entirely letting go of Edna’s timidity, Mr. Travolta
explores the exhibitionistic and sensual sides of her personality.
Mr. Walken’s gallantry in the role of Edna’s devoted husband, Wilbur, is
unforced and disarmingly sincere, and their duet, “(You’re) Timeless to Me,” is
one of the film’s musical high points. Another is “Without Love,” in which
the two young couples express their yearning with the help of some ingenious and
amusing special effects.
There are, to be sure, less thrilling moments, and stretches in which the pacing
falters. But the overall mood of “Hairspray” is so joyful, so full of
unforced enthusiasm, that only the most ferocious cynic could resist it.
It imagines a world where no one is an outsider and no one is a square, and
invites everyone in. How can you refuse?
“Hairspray” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It has some mildly
naughty jokes and innuendo.
HAIRSPRAY
Opens tonight in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco; tomorrow nationwide.
Directed and choreographed by Adam Shankman; written by Leslie Dixon, based on
the screenplay by John Waters and the musical stage play, book by Mark O’Donnell
and Thomas Meehan, music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Mr.
Shaiman; director of photography, Bojan Bazelli; edited by Michael Tronick;
score by Mr. Shaiman; production designer, David Gropman; produced by Craig
Zadan and Neil Meron; released by New Line Cinema. Running time: 107
minutes.
WITH: John Travolta (Edna Turnblad), Michelle Pfeiffer (Velma Von Tussle),
Christopher Walken (Wilbur Turnblad), Amanda Bynes (Penny Pingleton), James
Marsden (Corny Collins), Queen Latifah (Motormouth Maybelle), Brittany Snow
(Amber Von Tussle), Zac Efron (Link Larkin), Elijah Kelley (Seaweed), Allison
Janney (Prudy Pingleton), Jerry Stiller (Mr. Pinky), Paul Dooley (Mr. Spritzer)
and Nikki Blonsky (Tracy Turnblad).
|
