SummaryIn Hairspray, Tracy Turnblad uses her huge hair, big grin and great moves to become the queen of the local TV dance revue, using her newfound popularity to fight for integration in 1962's Baltimore. [New Line Cinema]
SummaryIn Hairspray, Tracy Turnblad uses her huge hair, big grin and great moves to become the queen of the local TV dance revue, using her newfound popularity to fight for integration in 1962's Baltimore. [New Line Cinema]
Controversial filmmaker John Waters finally hits his commercial stride in this film, parlaying his keen social observation and great compassion for society's outsiders into a colorful and engaging comedy full of dancing, music and heartfelt nostalgia.
From its opening shot-of little girls with huge hairdos-Hairspray is a relentlessly silly, crude and hilarious lampoon of modes and mores in teenage America, 1962. But it's also more than that. By closing credits, it has made some provocative observations about the influence of rock music on race relations in America, about how the '50s became the '60s and about the volatility of fashion and politics. [26b Feb 1988, p.F]
Hairspray is definitely self-congratulatory, like the message movies it aims to spoof. But there's a sweet morality mixed with the camp clumsiness of this nostalgic goof. Waters couldn't care less about the subtleties of plot or character. He writes and directs the way a kid finger paints. As usual, he's gathered a tantalizing cast from the so-out-they're-in crowd. [26 Feb 1988, p.b1]
There are some nice things to be said about Hairspray, the John Waters movie which opened over the weekend, but not enough to explain all you've been hearing about it. It's a fairly run-of-the-mill teenage dance movie, set in Baltimore in the early '60s, with a certain oddball humor that only occasionally lifts it out of its class. [29 Feb 1988, p.F3]