If there is one genre I can’t stand, it is musical. Unless it’s Interstella 5555, of course. I lost about half of my interest in Sweeney Todd when I found out they would be singing there. And yet the films I shortlisted for last Sunday evening were Hairspray and Terminator Salvation (a peculiar choice, I know). We chose Hairspray for some reason. Even though I didn’t know much about the plot, I had an idea of the film’s mood and I had seen those John Travolta pics from the film.
Alright, first the plot. It is 1962. Teenager Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) lives in Baltimore where everyone knows everyone. Her father Wilbur (Christopher Walken) keeps a joke shop selling some cheap rubbish and her mother Edna (John Travolta) is a size 30 housewife with a basket of washing in one arm and an ironing board in the other. She is one of those women who deliberately shut their brain and the door to the outside world (even though she apparently knows how to do business). And she’d rather Tracy followed her path. But Tracy, despite inheriting her mother’s physique, is mad about dancing. And once reassured by her father, Tracy grabs her best friend, Penny Pingleton (Amanda Bynes), and follows her dream right to the doors of The Corny Collins Show. And… wins a place there.
But the battle against stereotypes does not end here. Velma Von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer), a TV station manager and a retired Miss Baltimore Crabs, is determined to kick Tracy off the show and put the crown of Miss Teenage Hairspray on her daughter’s head. In addition, Velma decides to close down the Negro Day on the show, and now Tracy has to fight not only for her right to party, but also for equality on the screen…
The link between this, 2007, Hairspray and the one from 1988 turned out to be rather unusual because the 2007 film is an adaptation of a musical based on the 1988 non-music film. I haven’t seen the 1988 Hairspray which is ranked higher on IMDb, but I can say that I fully enjoyed this one, even though somewhere in the middle I got a bit tired of everyone singing. Plus, I wouldn’t say that many of its songs are so spectacular and I wouldn’t want to listen to them outside the Hairspray context.
Still, the film works very well as a world of its own, with funny and archetypical characters and a multitude of topics and ideas crammed into it in a very gentle way. Most of these ideas rotate around the concept of family, of course, but all these little observations (for example, the way women like planning relationships for years ahead after just one glance from a guy, or even without it) are introduced so nicely and cleverly that they never turn into visual or conceptual noise. The same can be said about colours. Hairspray is colourful in a right way. It’s a pleasure just to watch it. We are so used to seeing the 60’s in black-and-white. In Hairspray, colours are booming, but in a very balanced and stylish way.
At the same time, I am not really sure how they managed to attach segregation to the film story. It was a bit of a shift from one thing to another, an introduction of a second large theme, which was probably not so necessary. I would be perfectly happy if the film focused just on its main story, which was actually closer to feminism than segregation.
Oh yes, Hairspray is all about girls. Men in this film are always somewhere in the background. They are reluctant to make decisions, take responsibility, stand for what is right, act when action is needed. Now women do it all instead. So basically, you witness gender roles switching and John Travolta as Edna is stuck right in the middle of this switch.
As far as I know, Edna is traditionally played by a man in Hairspray. In this case, the choice of actor was great. Edna herself is quite a character, but knowing that it’s not just a heavy woman, but a guy with tonnes of prosthetics jumping merrily in the street makes watching her even more fun. I am not sure Christopher Walken matched my idea of Edna’s husband, but Edna and Tracy looked really well as mother and daughter, especially when contrasted with Velma and her daughter Amber. Michelle Pfeiffer created a smashing Velma, but I wasn’t that impressed with Brittany Snow as Amber. As I mentioned earlier, most of the film is focused on family and particularly motherhood. Even Brenda, one of the dancers on The Corny Collins show, leaves the show “for nine months”. But although there are many mothers in the film and they all express their parental love in their own way, the only proper, archetypal mother figure appears to be Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah). She performed the most beautiful song in the film:
Anything else I didn’t mention? Hairspray itself perhaps. At times, there were clouds of it. In one of the initial scenes where Tracy is styling her bouffant I could almost smell her hairspray! To wind it up now, I’d say that the film is charming and cheerful, with lots of funny little things in it and a very light-hearted mood. I found it perfect for an evening when I was tired and uncertain of what I wanted. And it managed to warm its way even to me, a musical sceptic, with its humour, style, and cuteness.
