Cast:
John Travolta as Edna Turnblad
Michelle Pfeiffer as Velma Von Tussle
Christopher Walken as Wilbur Turnblad
Amanda Bynes as Penny Pingleton
James Marsden as Corny Collins
Queen Latifah as Motormouth Maybelle
Brittany Snow Amber Von Tussle
Zac Efron as Link Larkin
Elijah Kelley as Seaweed
Alison Janney as Prudy Pingleton
Nikki Blonsky as Tracy Turnblad
Review:
Even at his most affable, John Waters films are tricky, niche beasts and have probably been better off for being so, giving him ample room for his particular brand of aloof, ironic humor. The original âHairsprayâ is as good an example of that as any, with itâs sharper than is apparent story of prejudice and change featuring a perky overweight girl (played here by radiant newcomer Nikki Blonsky) who bucks the system to become an unlikely teen star, and then becomes the even more unlikely center of an anti-segregation movement. Itâs easy material to handle badly, and while the watering down necessary to turn it into a successful stage musical probably didnât hurt it too much on Broadway, bringing âHairsprayâ back to film is a far more difficult endeavor. Inevitably, something is lost in the translation.
Like the recent unsuccessful adaptation of âThe Producers,â âHairsprayâ has brought a number of stylistic conventions from the stage  where sheer exuberance can successfully carry a light show through the shared empathy of the live audience  back to the big screen with it, and not particularly to the filmâs benefit. Unfortunately, the filmmakerâs devotion to the not-quite-source material has blinded them to that problem. Their main intent seems to be bringing what they love about the stage show to a wide audience, but the result is more of a film of a Broadway show rather than the film version of a Broadway show, and those are two very different things.
Unsurprisingly, itâs the musical numbers where âHairsprayâ excels. Director/choreographer Adam Shankman (âCheaper by the Dozen 2â) has crafted a series of well-done, if not particularly novel, numbers that takes great advantage of his talented cast and generally excellent production design. A duet between teen heartthrob Link (Zac Ephron) and Tracyâs framed photo is a particular standout. Theyâre colorful, rousing and fun, even if a lot of the lyrics tend towards the banal. However, while the film is composed mainly of song and dance routines, itâs not composed solely of them, and itâs when âHairsprayâ stops dancing and becomes an actual movie that the wheels come off the trolley. Despite a talented cast, there is a tendency towards over acting, and the dramatic interludes have all the heft of a 1970s sitcom, and a lot of the same delivery. Some might argue that anything outside of the musical numbers donât matter, but they do. They completely upset the pace of the film and take the viewer out of the reality being created. Waters worked that problem out by balancing it with darker, harder edged material  often within the same scene  but, ironically, a lot of the truly subversive elements have been carefully excised, presumably to make the film more appealing to a wide audience. The result isnât bad, either on itâs own or in comparison with the original, but it is as light and air headed as itâs pretending to be.
Despite that, most of the cast is too good to do a really bad job. Even though heâs been essentially playing himself for years, Christopher Walken is still fun to watch and âHairsprayâ is no exception. It also features the welcome return of Michelle Pfeiffer, whose voice has always seemed tailor made for a femme fatale. But the heart of the film is Nikki Blonski, who is generally impossible not to like and makes her way through the film with poise and grace; her Tracy Turnblad is one of the few actual improvements over the original. Ephron and dancer Elijah Kelly bring a great deal of style to the proceedings as well, but  like many of the other supporting players, including Marsden and Bynes  arenât in the film anywhere near enough.
Unfortunately, John Travoltaâs Edna Turnblad, apart from one excellent dance sequence with Walken, doesnât really work at all. He always seems to be putting on an act rather than actually acting, such that Edna becomes this tremendous in-joke that everyone is supposed to laugh at regardless of the context of the scene, but itâs not funny enough to justify killing the suspension of disbelief the way it does.
In alchemy, the transmuting of materials from one form to another would, in theory, distill their elements down to their purest essence. In film, the opposite is true. The more iterations are gone through, the more muddled things tend to get, and âHairsprayâ surely suffers from that problem. Itâs good at what it does, but not everything it does is good.