Hairspray - 2007 Motion Picture and Soundtrack

In the beginning (1988) was John Waters' low-budget, provocateurish cult movie Hairspray. This was partly defused, but also grandly gussied-up, by the Broadway musical version, opening in August 2002 and still running. And now the Hollywood feature adaptation further waters down Waters.

The New Line sellout strives to make the grotesque and campy palatable to the great unwashed—or, rather, the great washed. By aiming for greater realism and less controversy, it ends up solidly mediocre.

Hairspray is the two-tiered 1962 story of how greatly overweight Baltimore teen Tracy Turnblad captures not only a spot on the popular Corny Collins TV show, but also the love of heartthrob Link Larkin, the lead singer on the show. This despite the scheming, racist show producer, ex-beauty queen Velma Van Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer), who is plotting to manipulate her white-toast daughter, Amber (Brittany Snow), into the coveted title Miss Teenage Hairspray.

Meanwhile, Tracy's even fatter mother, Edna, who supplements hubby Wilbur's earnings from the joke shop he runs downstairs by taking in laundry, gradually comes out of bashful reclusiveness into full-fledged flaunting of her superopulent figure.

This, then, is a plea for the socio-economically underprivileged, whether by blue collar, black skin (only one monthly Negro Day on Corny Collins' show), bloated physique or cross-dressing (Edna must be played by a man). Although I, too, favor equal opportunity for all, I personally have no affection for obesity triumphant or hairspray-engendered hypertrophic hairdos. Nor do I care for the hedonistic and anti-intellectual sentiment in the Marc Shaiman-Scott Wittman lyrics, e.g., Corny singing:

"Who needs to read and write
When you can dance and sing?
Forget about your algebra and calculus
You can always do your homework
On the morning bus. . . ."

The new CD replicates the movie's conventionally ingratiating orchestrations by using not only Broadway's Harold Wheeler, but also the composer, Marc Shaiman, plus five others as orchestrators. A few songs are omitted or "repurposed," as the film's director, Adam Shankman, explains in a sentimental booklet note. Added are two new numbers: "Ladies' Choice," which allows Tracy (Nikki Blonsky) to strut her dancing (or shake her flab); and "Come So Far," for the final credits and the audience to depart on tapped toes.

Neither number is remarkable, but "New Girl in Town" is, dropped from the stage show but introduced here for Tracy's rise-to-fame montage and Negro Day (unseen in previous versions). The entire score is pleasant enough, including also "Without Love," which develops not only Link and Tracy's romance but also the interracial one of Tracy's repressed friend Penny (Amanda Bynes) with debonair young Seaweed (Elijah Kelley).

My biggest problem is with the supersession of Broadway's croaking-voiced and drag-queeny but effective Edna, Harvey Fierstein, by John Travolta, claiming to be more feminine but actually only a recognizable fattened-up Travolta. With a still-masculine voice, he affords no real contrast with Christopher Walken's amiable Wilbur in the score's most touching number, "(You're) Timeless to Me," wherein the spouses comically yet sweetly reaffirm their conjugal love. In an attempt to make the scene more cinematic with much running around the Turnblads' cramped backyard, the movie effectively flubs this little gem.

The disc obviously eschews the film's second-biggest failing, the use of realistic Baltimore street scenes that clash with what are, after all, fantasy numbers that Broadway's able director, Jack O'Brien, and gifted designer, David Rockwell, wittily stylized.

The CD's booklet doesn't help matters by not providing a plot synopsis or cast credits. There is no way of figuring out, for example, the identity of Aimee Allen, who here sings "Cooties," which, on stage, was snooty Amber's attempt to discredit the other Miss Teenage Hairspray contestants, but is now misplaced and misused.

Even when the CD comes up with the likable idea of having three Tracys (Blonsky, Broadway's Marissa Jaret Winokur and Waters' Ricki Lake) join in the—again misplaced—concluding cut, "Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now," we are frustrated by having no clue as to which voice is whose. At least the new film's chief original invention, a crude but funny breaking-wind joke, is not heard on disc.