Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
7/23/07
I'm
not a big fan of musicals. I get the strengths of the format, music
being such a pure expression of human emotion, but most musicals are so
banal that they can't take advantage of the potential of using song to
convey heartbreak, hope or joy. But “banal” is the last word you
could use to describe Hairspray, Adam Shankman's cinematic explosion
of joy that may well be the best musical I've ever seen. On the basis
of this and his work on South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut,
composer Marc Shaiman is starting to look like the lowbrow Stephen Sondheim.
Tracy
Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) has a dream: to become one of the teen dancers
on a 1960's Baltimore TV dance series called The Corny Collins
Show. There's only one problem: the short, overweight Tracy
doesn't fit the image of beauty promoted by producer Velma Von Tussle (Michelle
Pfeiffer), the one-time “Miss Baltimore Crabs”. Host Corny Collins
(James Marsden) has a dream of his own. The show is all-white, setting
aside a single “Negro Day” each month which is hosted by Motormouth Maybelle
(Queen Latifah), and Corny dreams of bringing the two casts together onto
a single integrated show. Destinies begin to collide when Tracy is
sent to detention, where most of the kids are black. Seaweed (Elijah
Kelley) teaches her some new moves which not only persuade Corny to add
this “different” girl to the show, but also catch the attention of another
of the dancers, heartthrob Link (Zac Efron). This doesn't sit well
with the show's lead dancer (and Velma's daughter) Amber (Brittany Snow),
who also sees Tracy as an unwelcome competitor for the title of Miss Hairspray,
a live event that will determine the lead dancer for the following season.
But Tracy has only started to shake things up, getting her shut-in mother
Edna (John Travolta) to step out of the house, watching interracial love
blossom between Seaweed and her best friend Penny (Amanda Bynes), and joining
Maybelle in a march to demand integration. Velma and her Establishment
allies will do everything they can to stop her, but the future is coming,
and You Can't Stop the Beat!
From
its' wonderful opening number “Good Morning Baltimore” to that famous showstopping
finale, Hairspray does nothing but string together songs, characters
and incidents hand-crafted to make a person smile. Joy oozes from
the film's ever colorful frame, and I've never seen a musical maintain
such a high level of energy from beginning to end. Director Shankman
(who also did the choreography) has crafted a love letter to inclusion
that succeeds where so many others fail: it really seems to believe
what it's selling. It helps that Hairpray isn't trying to
tell you that ONLY outsiders have something to contribute. Nobody
fits the Establishment's ideal better than handsome Corny or crooner Link,
but they're both good people who want to do the right thing. And
it doesn't try to deify its' black or overweight characters (Tracy is a
spectacularly, hilarious awful student), it only asks that they have the
same opportunities as everyone else. The integration themes add a
perfect layer of zing to the movie's uplifting message because we can just
look around (well, I can, for others it might depend upon where
you live) and see the progress that's been made.
The
cast is perfect. Blonsky (in her professional acting debut) embodies
the high-spirited Tracy while delivering as a singer and dancer.
Christopher Walken gets a great showcase for his considerable song and
dance skills and once again shows why he's one of the movies' great character
actors: his unique presence just fits in almost every situation
and he never seems anything less than spontaneous. Pfeiffer shines
as the hateful Velma: I get the feeling she's entering a fun new
phase of her career where the diabolical skills she showed years ago in
Batman Returns will finally be put to consistent use, and Snow keeps
up as her protégé. Bynes is a goofy treat as Penny,
so big-heartedly throwing herself into every one of Tracy's, and finally
her own, adventures. Latifah projects so much wisdom and starpower
that she's a perfect fit as Maybelle. So too does Marsden use the
same talents that made him a great member of the X-Men to nail Corny's
virtues, while also doing a great job with the scenes where he's clearly
mocking his own tired show while he's doing it. Efron makes a great
teen idol, as he's done in real life for millions of Disney Channel fans,
and has fun with his shallow but good-hearted character as well.
Kelley brings lots of energy to Seaweed and does a good job showing us
how much he's accepted parts of a segregated society no one should have
had to. Allison Jamey is also a hoot as Penny's deeply, psychotically
religious mother.
And
then there's John Travolta. I've never seen John Waters' original
Hairspray (which inspired the Broadway show upon which this film
is, in turn, based), but I do understand his decision to use, as he so
often did, transvestite Divine in the role of Tracy's Mom. It certainly
fits the story's themes of accepting unusual people for what they are.
The stroke of mad inspiration that came with the Broadway version was to
continue to use a man in the role. Now, for the big screen, not only
is Travolta a man playing a woman, but he's doing it in a state-of-the-art
fat suit that (along with his usual high-energy performance) makes him
surprisingly, bizarrely convincing. There's a lot of quality subtext
too, as Travolta left musicals behind after Grease almost 30 years
ago and has since battled weight problems and, apparently, a nagging sense
that returning to the genre would just lead to unkind comparisons to his
iconic work as a svelte young man. Though I'm not a fan of Grease,
even I had a certain chill when his long-silent singing voice broke out
again. I'm sure a lot of thought went into exactly how he should
sing, seeing as he's supposed to be a woman and all, but he's wisely chosen
to just be himself in three of his four numbers, and just as wisely to
go up a few octaves for “(You're) Timeless to Me”, his big love song with
Walken. That oddball pair actually has some real romantic chemistry,
which is just weird but also kinda sweet.
I mentioned
Marc Shaiman earlier and I've got to go back to the songs: they're
just wonderful. Those like me who've listened to the sweetly profane
South Park soundtrack a couple hundred times will notice similar
themes in the music (the lyrical strategies of the two movies' opening
numbers are basically identical), but with better/real singers and the
chance to let the music tell more of the story, he and co-lyricist Scott
Wittman have hit another, different home run. Highlights include
the previously mentioned “Good Morning Baltimore”, Marsden's wonderfully
witty theme song “The Nicest Kids in Town” and “(It's) Hairspray”, the
Walken/Travolta duet, “Without Love” which perfectly aligns all the characters
for the third act (another of my favorite musical devices) and, of course,
“You Can't Stop the Beat” which has that wonderful quality for which musicals
are made: the act of singing it resolves just about every single
plot thread with a triumphant climactic flourish.
As
you can probably tell, I pretty much went totally gaga for Hairspray,
spending every one of its' 115 minutes smiling, laughing, crying or all
three. I'm already memorizing the soundtrack and expect to see it
at least two or three more times during its' run. While it's not
deep or profound, it pulses with a pure goodness and light that only the
act of singing what's in your heart can hope to express. Now if only
more movie musicals could follow their lead. |
