Film

Hairspray (2007)

Director: Adam Shankman

Movie review

From Time Out New York

Much better than 2005’s The Producers (how’s that for faint praise?), this screen version of the Tony-winning musical skips along its candy-colored early-1960s path, only to be felled by some hazardous Hollywood ham. John Waters’s original 1988 movie makes for an inspired match with belted songs; his Baltimore story is set at a local TV dance show featuring the “nicest kids in town” and the lyrical yearnings of body-mass-challenged Tracy Turnblad (the debuting Blonsky, who’s great). There’s also a desegregation component that builds more organically as an expression of a musical than as a harsh dramatic awakening; Adam Shankman’s film establishes a nonrealistic dreaminess that’s affecting.

But offsetting these careful virtues is, yes, a fat suit. Mysteriously adopting a puckered twang that has nothing to do with Charm City or Divine, John Travolta comes close to sabotaging the goodwill with a gelatinous, showy turn that never weaves with the fabric of the cast. It’s always: Wow, look at Travolta doing the dance move from Pulp Fiction (and Saturday Night Fever); wow, look at Travolta getting kissed by Christopher Walken (a musical veteran, but underused here). The vanity is difficult to ignore, but amazingly, the younger performers manage to do exactly that.