Hairspray is a joy. I had my doubts - and the big one is that man in the dress in the middle of it, more on that in a minute - but it didn't take more than 10 minutes to pretty much erase them. The film basically lives up to its 
promise. Is it perfect? No, Hollywood adaptations usually involve compromises to Broadway shows that are almost painful - in this case, the loss of "The Big Dollhouse," the hilarious women's prison number that was a key set piece of the show, built from the original John Waters' film. Still, that's a small quibble for a film that manages the neat trick of being a bright sunny musical that still manages to pay respectful homage to its source material, and the weirdness that is John Waters.
People are likening the film to Grease (probably for the connections to Travolta... and even Pfeiffer), but it's real ancestor is Bye Bye Birdie, the also unstoppable piece of ear candy that brought fifties rock/pop to Broadway to begin with. Like Birdie, Hairspray pits a young attractive teen cast against an array of sophisticated adults, and provides the chance for the rare all star ensemble cast outing where no one appears to get short shrift. Indeed if this musical Hairspray had arrived twenty years ago, I could almost envision Ann Margret in Pfeiffer's part.
But of course, there are reasons why Hairspray took this long.
To recap - in case you've managed to, I don't know, sleep through the past 20 years or so, Hairspray was John Waters big break into the mainstream. Paying tribute to the Baltimore of his youth, he concocted the story of Tracy Turnblad, a nice East Baltimore girl with a head full of dreams and a hairstyle big enough to hold them. Tracy wants to dance on The Corny Collins Show, an afternoon dance program like American Bandstand. But the station's Manager, the evil Velma Von Tussle, wants only thin pretty teens, and no one who can upstage her daughter, Amber.
Tracy makes it onto the show in spite of Velma, but invites even bigger trouble by openly supporting the integration of the show, and by extension the deeply segregated community in Baltimore (the show features a once-a-month "Negro Day"); after leading a protest march with "Negro Day" hostess Motormouth Maybelle, Tracy turns the tables on segregationist Velma and Amber and succeeds in integrating everyone - including her best friend Penny with Maybelle's son, Seaweed.
Waters' film was such a runaway success that it inspired the Broadway musical version, sunnier and cheerier in its take on the racial issue, but no less pointed. Night after night, audiences cheered as the stage came together in black and white harmony.
The cheers were also for Harvey Fierstein, who wowed audiences as Edna Turnblad, Tracy's mother. The role originally belonged to legendary drag queen Divine (as mom to Ricki Lake's Tracy), but Fierstein made the
musical role his own in an incredible star turn that won him a Tony.
So now we have John Travolta as Edna, in a bit of stunt casting that had a big question mark around it - would he condescend to the role? Could he really do what Divine did? Or what Harvey did?
Well, the answer to all of them is no. Travolta inhabits Edna's fat suit fully, in a performance that's miles away from both Divine and Harvey. Where Divine was playing a hard-bitten frump who just needed a dash of sparkle, and Harvey played Ethel Merman playing in drag, Travolta plays it like a zaftig, past her prime actress - which is to say, there's a real performance here, as he finds an ordinary woman inside of Edna, who just needs encouragement to come out of her shell. And once she does, there's no stopping her.
Perhaps the real genius is his accent - a flawless Bawlamerese that gives the movie context as well as weight. When Edna talks about dreams deferred and her fear of showing the world that she's "put on a few pounds" you can hear the voice of the working class gal who thinks next week's fad diet can solve her problems. I think Travolta may have steered himself right into an Oscar nomination, it's so good.
But the point is that Edna's a part of something bigger (if that can be believed). Queen Latifah shows her magic touch again, capturing the Motormouth Maybelle part and giving it everything she gave Big Mama Morton in Chicago (odd that the biggest black woman in movie musicals these days wasn't in Dreamgirls. There's a lesson in there, somewhere). She has the show's two biggest set pieces - "Big Blonde and Beautiful" and "I Know Where I've Been" - a near hymn-like ode to the civil rights struggle that doesn't for a moment feel false or unearned.
And that, really has been Hairspray's miraculous message all along. Scoff at its History Comix approach to the Civil Rights Era - where decades of segregation can be solved with one song and dance number - but at least it believes in everyone coming together. It's testament to how groundbreaking this film remains that the kissing between Amanda Bynes' Penney and Elijah Kelley's Seaweed (I counted three serious lip locks) amount to more interracial kissing between a black man and a white woman than has been seen in all of Denzel Washington's career (which probably helps to explain the casting of a star as major as Bynes in what is, essentially, an extremely secondary role). We've come a long way; but in 20 years, Hairspray remains better able to show love between the races than almost anything else onscreen in the interim.
And it does so, as I said, with joy. Director Adam Shankman has done a largely solid job of re-adapting the material, and where he occasionally gets overwhelmed with too many storylines and a bit too much flash, his actors - Travolta especially - keep things appropriately human scaled. One could go on and on about the cast - I'm neglecting Michelle Pfeiffer's comeback-worthy turn as Velma, not to mention Zac Efron's Elvis-ish turn as Link Larkin, and Christopher Walken's grizzled old showman turn as Wilbur Turnblad, man of the house.
As for the score, I personally wish I was sitting in The Senator theater in Baltimore to hear audiences roar at Good Morning Baltimore, the showstopping opening number. Almost all the good material remains - there are some 16 songs in the show - except Dollhouse, and Shankman improves on "I Can Hear The Bells" - Tracy's fairly quiet ode to Link. Songwriter Marc Shaiman comes through with "Ladies Choice"- a new snazzy number for Zac Efron that displays Link better than the marginal "It Takes Two" from the show (among 4 new songs). But as always, Hairspray sizzles right to the end, when "You Can't Stop The Beat" actually manages to put integration and sex appeal into a song bursting with fun, wholesome energy. Real life should have such sparkle.
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