Reviews by Matt

As a guy, I’m not supposed to like musicals. Wait…that sounds really familiar, I remember now. It was the first like of my review of “Rent”. It is as true now as it was then. As I sat in the theater I got the impression that I was going to lose a few “man cards.” Here I was about to watch “Hairspray,” the movie of a musical I had actually seen and to top it all off, I was sitting next to my mother (no offense ma, it’s all about making the review riveting). So imagine my surprise when, yet again, I actually enjoyed it.

It is the 1960’s in Baltimore and everyday after school Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) and her best friend Penny (Amanda Bynes) run home to watch the popular dance show The Corny Collins Show. It has always been Tracy’s dream to dance on the show even though her weight does not meet the shows standards When Corny Collins (James Marsden) holds auditions for a new cast member Tracy goes to the try out and ends up getting the part. Amber Von Tussle (Brittany Snow) and her mother Velma (Michelle Pfieffer) want to keep the show full of skinny, good looking white kids and do their best to keep it that way. With the help of her friends Seaweed (Elijah Kelly), Penny and Tracy’s parents (Christopher Walken and John Travolta) she vows to integrate the show.

I was really impressed with all the performances in this movie, except one. John Travolta. When he was cast as Edna Turnblad, I was skeptical. From what I know, only men have played the role. What it was the bothered me was he did not really sing. He spoke the lines he was supposed to be singing. It’s not that he cannot sing, anyone who has seen “Grease” knows he has a really good voice (there goes another one of my “man cards”). In the play the actors who played Edna at times sung in a low register adding a little more humor to the role. Travolta stayed in the fake female voice for the entire movie and that took away from what the character could have been.

Other than that, everyone was really good in the roles they played. Christopher Walken did a really good job as the odd father. Having ignored Amanda Bynes since I stopped watching “All That” when I was 11 or 12, I was really impressed with her singing ability and to my surprise she can actually act. Queen Latifah was perfect as Motormouth Maybelle and no one else could have played the character any better. I was even impressed with Zac Efron as heartthrob Link Larkin.

The one actress who out shines all of her many and well cast costars is Nikki Blonsky. This is not only her first big movie, but it is also her first movie ever. She does a great job and is, as cliché as it sounds, a star in the making. She has a really good voice and a fairly decent actor. She had a lot to do in this movie. She had to sing, dance and act and did them all very well. “Hairspray” in all of its many incarnations has cast an unknown in the role of Tracy (Ricki Lake in the original movie and Marissa Jaret Winokur in the musical) and they continued that tradition in the movie musical. (Also stay tuned for the credits and you can hear all three original Tracys sing “Mamma I’m A Big Girl Now.”)

While it does stray a little from the musical, “Hairspray” is still a decent adaptation of the musical. It was fun, light-hearted (besides the theme of racism) and an easy movie to enjoy. The music is catchy and don’t be surprised if you find yourself singing it days after seeing the movie.

7 out of 10
Rated PG
1 hr 47 mins