Kathmandu:

With a cast that includes John Travolta as a large mother dancing again after last millennium Grease and stars like Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer, Amanda Bynes, Queen Latifah, James Marsden and Zac Efron, Hairspray’s real star is Nikki Blonsky. Here in a movie you have a television politics, fight for racial integration and sheer fun.

Hairspray is a musical set in the early 60’s and the music is authentic without copying any of the old standards. But there is a history to Hairspray and it is as great as the dancing and the singing.

Says critic Kit Bowen, “When eccentric writer/director John Waters made the subversive but colourful Hairspray in 1988—about a plus-sized girl and her dreams to dance, as she breaks taboos in the early ‘60s—he probably thought it would be chalked up as another of his cult favourites. But here we are, reviewing the latest Hairspray incarnation, a movie version of the smash hit Broadway musical, based on the 1988 offbeat classic. Funny how things work. The story is pretty much the same: The bubbly Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky), a big girl with big hair and an even bigger heart, wants to dance on Baltimore’s TV dance show The Corny Collins Show. Her mother, Edna (Travolta) isn’t too keen on her daughter’s aspirations only because she doesn’t want to see Tracy hurt. But against all odds, Tracy wows them on and off the TV screen, squashing the reigning princess, Amber Von Tussle (Brittany Snow), finding love with the local hunk Link (Zac Efron)—and fighting for racial equality on the hippest dance party on TV.

Tracy is the cornerstone to making Hairspray zing—and every actress who has played her has nailed it in her own way. Nikki Blonsky, a former ice cream parlour employee who beat out several hundred girls to win the role. Her happy-go-lucky Tracy quite literally lights up the screen every time she appears. The supporting cast is also very appealing. Michelle Pfeiffer, who once again gets to use those lovely pipes of hers, is perfectly unctuous as Velma Von Tussle, Amber’s scheming mother and the TV station manager. Queen Latifah adds her certain joie de vivre as Motormouth Maybelle, the host of Corny Collins’ Negro Day. Also good are Amanda Bynes, as Tracy’s lollypop-eating best friend Penny Pingleton, and Elijah Kelley as the groovin’ Seaweed, Penny’s forbidden love. John Travolta as the mother is marvellous in-joke for anyone who saw Grease and fat and all he is schmaltzy and fabulous. If anyone can really surpass the late underground singer Divine, the original Hairspray’s Turnblad matriarch, who did it au naturel, it is the campy Travolta who has a generation who grew up with him in hysterics.  Director Adam Shankman understands the bubblegum appeal of a bee-bopping musical. Fuelled by catchy tunes from the Broadway show, plus a few new ones created just for the movie, Shankman orchestrates the big song and dance numbers—of which there are plenty—in such a way to get you moving in your seat every time. He also frames his talent in their more personal, character-driven songs with a steady hand. I just wonder what John Waters would have done with it. Maybe a little more dog poop? In any event, forget about Chicago and Dreamgirls—Hairspray is the perfect popcorn movie musical that will get everyone dancing and singing the way Grease did a generation ago.”