In 1988 Ricki Lake starred in John Waters’ Hairspray, a movie about fat Tracy Turnblad, who—through the power of big hair and badass moves—garners a prized spot on an after-school teen TV dance hit The Corny Collins Show, sparks a race riot with her support for Negro dancers, and integrates 1960s Baltimore’s television sets in the process. Nearly two decades later, Ricki has done the makeover bit: She hosted a talk show, dropped more than 125 pounds and even dated a trainer for a few years. Waters’ indomitable PG cult flick has been made over, too: First into a pastel-pink Tony-winning Broadway musical call to arms against prejudice in 2002, and now a Hollywood-style song and dance buffet packed with more stars than a LA plastic surgeon’s office.
The effect is as disconcerting and yet enticing as looking at those blurry “before” and “after” photos on late-night diet ads (see the original 1988 movie and new production trailers below). Waters’ beloved Baltimore is now played by Toronto (more sound stages, more big-budget production perks). The juicy script, filled with oddball cameos and campy dialog, has been reshaped as a steamroller of cheeky, cheery songs about the power of self, most of which involve lame metaphors about lights in the darkness, chocolate or food. Waters’ story of a hefty misfit who steals the heart of a teenage heartthrob and rallies for black and white kids to dance together on a white-only TV show (remember kids, the last Friday of every month is Negro Day!) is now more a star-power showcase. Michelle Pfeiffer takes on Debbie Harry’s original role as brittle, racist stage mom Velma Von Tussle. Christopher Walken, doing his best “The Continental” routine from Saturday Night Live, steals scene after scene as Tracy’s joke-shop owning father, Wilbur (first played by Jerry Stiller). Sadly, Queen Latifah, as Motormouth Maybelle, the doyenne of Baltimore’s soul scene, pales in comparison with Ruth Brown’s 1988 performance.
Other problems? Well, the pacing, like many adaptations of Broadway shows, is choppy. The story, illogical and often just plain dumb (why would Pfeiffer try and seduce Tracy’s dad again?). Tracy, played by Cold Stone Creamery ice-cream counter girl turned actress Nikki Blonsky, is effervescent yet edgeless. And the choreography trades Hairspray’s original hormone-fueled bump and grind for Dirty Dancing-style lifts and line dances courtesy of director/choreographer Adam Shankman. In other words, as a remake, it’s a dirty shame. But as a musical, it’s a surprisingly good time.
What really saves the whole sugary works is that the heart of the movie (and the Broadway play) has been transplanted from hot-headed hair hopper Tracy Turnblad to her massive mother Edna, played by John Travolta in that much-talked-about fat suit. Whereas gender-bending master Divine played the original mama as a movie monster—shrill voice, sweaty pits and eye-blinding muumuus—Travolta’s soft-spoken Edna is another creature entirely. All whispers and wringing of hands, she’s a soft, pillowy mountain who, as she explains to her teenage daughter in an inscrutable Baltimore accent, hasn’t “gone out of the house since I was a size 10.” (That’d be 1951). Her transformation from shut-in to fat, fabulous siren, accompanied by street-stopping dance numbers and a Fred & Ginger style duet with husband Walken, rings more true than the film’s clunky march for black rights. Maybe it’s because you can see Travolta inside Edna, distancing himself from Wild Hogs and Swordfish with each kick and coquettish triple-extra-large booty shake. The man from Grease can still move, there’s no doubt about that.
Really, all the whiz-bang of the new production is harmless. Maybe it just feels so bizarre given the source material. This can of Hairspray assumes that every single audience member knows that equality is awesome, prejudice is soooo wrong and that being heavy is totally OK as long as you feel like a million bucks inside. But all that feel-good stuff is a funhouse mirror image of the original film. John Waters, the delightfully profane god of crap-eating drag queens, repressed sex addicts and rockabilly crybabies, does believe in a world where people are racists assholes. Where blond high-school nymphs do terrorize fat girls and a size 18 doesn’t get the guy. In the original film, he wasn’t rewinding to the crazy, mixed up 1960s when people thought integration was a four-letter word. He was thumbing his nose at every prejudiced ass and anorexic housewife currently residing in Baltimore and ever other American town.
Waters himself doesn’t seem too worried about the disconnect. He recently told a Baltimore TV crew that he was “insanely happy” with the new movie, which he calls a “reinvention” of the original. “If I ever did anything subversive, it’s the movie that’s turned into this,” he said. “Because the most Middle American people are watching two men sing a love song to each other and [it] encourages your white daughter to date a black guy.”
Who’s to argue with the master’s grand plan? After all, John Waters does makes a cameo within the first two minutes of the new Hairspray. As a flasher, of course.
Rated PG. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Cinema, Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Hilltop, Sandy, Sherwood, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.
Original 1988 Hairspray trailer
Hairspray 2007 trailer
John Waters’ interview on Baltimore TV news
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