Review of Hairspray (1988) by Edith N — 04 Mar 2009

I have no intention of seeing the new version. Part of the issue is that I can't take the whole John Travolta thing. Okay, most of the issue is that I can't take the whole John Travolta thing. I saw no reason to cast a man in the role, frankly. Okay, yes, the role of Edna Turnblad was originally done by a man in drag. Sure. And it was an iconic John Waters role. Oh, yeah. All of this is true. However, it wasn't some guy in a fat suit. It was [i]Divine[/i]. The thing about Divine was that she really got into the role. To the extent that I feel the proper pronoun is "she." Personally, I almost forgot that what I was looking at was a drag queen. I don't see how it's possible to forget, in the musical, that what you're looking at is John Travolta in a fat suit. I can only assume that the makers felt they needed a big name in the role, but I might have actually been interested in watching it if they'd cast an overweight unknown woman--or actual drag queen, I suppose--instead.

Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake) and her friend, Penny Pingleton (Leslie Ann Powers), are huge fans of the [i]Corny Collins[/i] (Shawn Thompson) [i]Show[/i]. It's the low-rent Baltimore local version of [i]American Bandstand[/i]. Tracy is a fantastic dancer who happens to be perhaps fifty or seventy-five pounds overweight. Despite that, she makes it onto the show. One day a month, the show hosts a "Negro Day," but it is starkly segregated. Tracy, however, is all in favour of integration. She rapidly becomes a teen idol among the teens of Baltimore, and she throws her support behind an integration movement both for the show and for fellow "Corny's Council" member Amber VonTussle (Colleen Fitzpatrick)'s family's amusement park. She is helped in this goal by "Negro Day" hostess Motormouth Maybell (Ruth Brown) and her son--and Penny's boyfriend--Seaweed (Clayton Prince). Even Corny and his assistant, Tammy (Mink Stole), are on Tracy's side, but the station owner is violently opposed to the idea.

This is considered a tame Waters film. Indeed, it is, compared to such things as [i]Pink Flamingos[/i]. (Not that I've seen [i]Pink Flamingos[/i]. But nobody eats dog poo in this one.) This and [i]Cry-Baby[/i], which came out at approximately the same time, are also considered by many to be lesser Waters, presumably because they're a lot more mainstream. However, I think the Waters wit is pretty apparent in both of them. He has a gift for satire, and while it is mild compared to some of his other work, I also think it's pretty funny. Penny's mom, Prudence (Joann Harvilla), is delightful in her wackadooness. Which, of course, brings in John Waters in his cameo as the psychiatrist Prudence hires to cure Penny of her friendliness toward "Negroes.".

Every generation has its own hair and fashion to be embarassed about. In addition to the big hair--ratted or feathered, depending on how you do it--there's the freaky beatniks. (In addition to the standard Waters cast, there's inexplicable Pia Zadora as "beatnik chick.") There's Sonny Bono's suit, though I think Sonny Bono always wore that kind of suit. Actually, I kind of like the crinoline look, but the two-tone dye in Ricki Lake's hair is just awful. My generation has a lot to apologize for, fashionwise, but we mostly did less tortuous things to ourselves, except for those of us who got into piercing and tatoos, which I suppose are more so. However, with the exception of some of the girls I knew in junior high, few of us really got into the hairspray thing.

Apparently, Ricki Lake started losing a ton of weight during the filming, because she spent a lot of time exercising--dancing burns calories; I have a friend whose entire exercise plan is Dance Dance Revolution. (Not actually a bad plan.) I mean, he has weights, too, but a first-floor apartment was very important to him. This is something to think about. Gods know I can't do a dance workout myself--bad knees and a bad back--but I did read once about schools that insituted DDR in gym class. Heck, my sixth-grade gym teacher had us do the sort of dance that was in this movie--I can still do the Twist--and there is, after all, [i]Sweatin' to the Oldies[/i].