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Just got back from seeing Hairspray, and the short-short version of the review is that if I have friends who haven't seen and are going when I'm available I will actually go to see a movie for a second time in a theater.
That said: I have to say, all the reviewers who are being all "It's playing safe! Baltimore is sparkly! THIS IS HOLLYWOOD CHEESE" are, I think, forgetting that they're comparing this one to John Waters' original. It is very much subversive in little ways, and full of awesome little gags, and it isn't above randomly running a character into a doorframe for a cheap laugh that isn't funny so much for the cheap laugh itself (though it is), but because they just threw it in there. (It also has the air of maybe not being planned, but when the take ran as such everyone loved it and it didn't need editing out.)
It definitely takes a different slant than Waters did, and I think that's what trips a lot of reviwers up. Waters sold the plot in his as "Tracy and her battle for popularity and winning the guy and, oh, there's some integrationist stuff happening over here that we use to lightly mock those whose benevolence is prejudicially tinged." This one sells the plot as "Tracy and her battle for integration and, oh, she winds up with the guy." The light mocking is still there, though. It's just subtle, which I think maybe went over the heads of reviewers not expecting subtlety from a movie starring John Travolta in drag?
Oh, and there was a gaggle of gays at the back of the theater totally in on the subtext of Mrs. Pingleton's attitude towards Penny that I don't think I would have caught if they weren't there. (Basically, Penny stands in for the gay kid - since I was blessed with non-Pinglton parents it wasn't as resonating a view for me as, perhaps, for them, but once they started reacting to it... yeah. And by the way that? Fully a Watersian move that was, now that I think of it, in the original film what with the psychiatrist being called in and all... and Waters cast himself as the psychiatrist! Oh, the papers I'll never write...
And beside all this, it's just a damn fun movie with awesome music.
And to Tracy's stylists in the last scene: O I SEE WAT U DID THAR, putting her in before-its-time fashion, with the sleek-straight hair and go-go boots and... yeah. Nikki Blonsky also looks a hell of a lot like Ricki Lake in the equivalent scene there, too, which was almost distracting.
That said: I have to say, all the reviewers who are being all "It's playing safe! Baltimore is sparkly! THIS IS HOLLYWOOD CHEESE" are, I think, forgetting that they're comparing this one to John Waters' original. It is very much subversive in little ways, and full of awesome little gags, and it isn't above randomly running a character into a doorframe for a cheap laugh that isn't funny so much for the cheap laugh itself (though it is), but because they just threw it in there. (It also has the air of maybe not being planned, but when the take ran as such everyone loved it and it didn't need editing out.)
It definitely takes a different slant than Waters did, and I think that's what trips a lot of reviwers up. Waters sold the plot in his as "Tracy and her battle for popularity and winning the guy and, oh, there's some integrationist stuff happening over here that we use to lightly mock those whose benevolence is prejudicially tinged." This one sells the plot as "Tracy and her battle for integration and, oh, she winds up with the guy." The light mocking is still there, though. It's just subtle, which I think maybe went over the heads of reviewers not expecting subtlety from a movie starring John Travolta in drag?
Oh, and there was a gaggle of gays at the back of the theater totally in on the subtext of Mrs. Pingleton's attitude towards Penny that I don't think I would have caught if they weren't there. (Basically, Penny stands in for the gay kid - since I was blessed with non-Pinglton parents it wasn't as resonating a view for me as, perhaps, for them, but once they started reacting to it... yeah. And by the way that? Fully a Watersian move that was, now that I think of it, in the original film what with the psychiatrist being called in and all... and Waters cast himself as the psychiatrist! Oh, the papers I'll never write...
And beside all this, it's just a damn fun movie with awesome music.
And to Tracy's stylists in the last scene: O I SEE WAT U DID THAR, putting her in before-its-time fashion, with the sleek-straight hair and go-go boots and... yeah. Nikki Blonsky also looks a hell of a lot like Ricki Lake in the equivalent scene there, too, which was almost distracting.
