Hairspray

Saturday evening Jan, auntie & I went to the movies. As we had auntie with us, we were looking for something in the “G” area, but that might entertain us, as well. After a little dithering we picked Hairspray.

From its opening scene with Tracy Turnblad’s ebullient “Good Morning Baltimore,” its wickedly funny cameo of John Waters as a flasher and Tracy’s triumphant arrival at school sitting atop a garbage truck, it was obvious this was at the very least going to be fun.

Nikki Blonsky played Tracy Turnblad as a force of nature. And I think that’s what particularly caught me. Waters’ story reduced all the ills of race and class and the many, many differences of our human condition to the simple silly storyline of who gets to sing on a local television show’s sock hop in 1962 Baltimore. The script and the actors combined beautifully to express the force of nature that simple honesty and genuine delight in the human condition can occasionally be. And that force of nature was wonderfully presented by Ms Blonsky.

Actually, the whole cast was superb. I particularly enjoyed Queen Latifa’s Motormouth Maybelle and thought, my goodness, John Travolta really did sink into Edna, Tracy’s mom. I know some reviewers sneered at Travolta’s turn at drag, but I thought he played it straight and with dignity. It was, I admit, never possible to forget Edna was John Travolta, but then did anyone ever forget Divine was Divine or Harvey Firestein was, well, Harvey Fiestein when they took the role in the first movie and on stage?

The cynic in me was certainly aware that a kid like Tracy was never going to be picked for anything like the Corny Collens Show. And so nothing that followed would ever have followed.

But this wasn’t a show for the cynic in me.

Rather it was a celebration of innocence and hope. And, it didn’t even matter that it was put together by Hollywood, as cynical a crowd as anyone could hope for. It worked. At least it worked for me.

You want a feel-good two hours? Something that in the aggregate offers a vision of hope for the world? Well, Hairspray will fill the bill.