Saw Hairspray last night b/c I wanted to see a movie. I can't say I was expecting genius. Can't even say I was expecting great. Or good. Or decent. What I got was a a strong desire to see the stage show, and a very dissapointing movie.If you can get past John Travolta hunching around in the awful lumpy female fatsuit, pursing his lips while delivering all his lines with some sort of mutated Minnesota accent, you have to put up with lackluster editing, jokes that fall flat, and an inelegant treatment of racial issues. I KNOW that the time period and subject matter call for a lot of jokes about integration, but pair it with a trimphant Queen Latifah marching through a fakey set with an unimpressive number of others holding cliched picket signs and throw in a cross-dissolve every other second and you get schlock, not biting commentary.
I can't claim to be a devotee of all things Hairspray, so I won't talk about John Waters' original intentions for the first film, but I do know enough to say it was supposed to be campy, like everything he makes. The tone of this version was completely mismatched with lines like "I wish every day was Negro day!" It was too earnest, too typical, too Disnified. There were some funny standouts, namely all of Allison Janney's lines, but overall, I wasn't laughing.
The music was great though, and like I said, whet my appetite for the stage show, which I feel I could could grant more leeway to tone-wise. Live theater is already suffused with a certain degree of camp, and from what I was told the play is funnier. Given the varied arsenal of movie tricks availble, the film fell totally flat. I've been given shit for this before, but I really think Chicago is a perfect movie adaptation. It wasn't the play on film, it was a film with the same plot and songs as the play. You felt Fosse in it, but Rob Marshall did away with the all-black sparseness of the costumes and set and added what only film can add....namely, close-ups, great editing and some depth.
Call me a hater, but I'm just callin' em like I see 'em. I did no research and am aware that Hairspray is mainly a popcorn flick for kids anyway.
1 comment:
Thanks for warning the WORLD and for warning me.
I saw the previews (and the hype on "So you think you can dance") and knew I'd be tempted. But---thank GOD what saved me was . . . I hadn't seen the original. So I went to my local independent video store, rented the DVD (cause Portland Library doesn't have it) and had a BALL. Divine's fat was REAL fat. Ruth Brown's rock n' roll queendom was REAL rock n' roll (early days) queendom. Ric OCasek, Sonny Bono, a young college-fresh Rikki Lake dancing her A-S-S off, all genuine camp many new starts. The hotty guy became an elvis impersonator. He looks JUST like a young Elvis. Oh gawd yeah and Jerry STiller at his campiest. JW made this movie in his special campy LOW-BUDGET way about a special campy but earth shaking time and place where DANCING truly was a radical act, and did change American history and in waters's personal history. It's really a moving film.
thanks for removing ANY lingering temptations to see it bastardized. Hope JW made a good contract for himself and a good killing.
s
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